Briggs Body Co / Hudson info needed

[sftamx1]

I have a 1933 Hudson Terraplane convertible coupe. It has a Briggs Body tag on the firewall. It is my understanding that Hudson sent coupe bodies to Briggs to be converted into convertibles. Any way to find out how many conversions they did for Hudson,and what was involved? Did Briggs do this for any other car company in this time period? I ask this because when Briggs chopped off the tops, the windshield became only 7" tall, it appears that they removed the top section of the windshield frame where it was joined together.  (See pics) I have never seen a low priced production car with such a low looking "chopped" windshield. Maybe this was the only convertible conversion Briggs was doing during this time? Is this how other car companies created convertible coupes? Do the numbers on the tag give any info? Thanks for any help.

[DFeeney]

Have you compared the height of the windshield against a 32 or 33 Plymouth convertible coupe?

[sftamx1]

Yes they are much taller, probably the same as the enclosed models. Look at the photo of my convertible, it looks custom...

[Hudsy Wudsy]

I don't know if this will be any help at all, but you might try to look at this assortment of "1932 convertibles" that I Google Imaged:

1932 convertible - Google Search

[30DodgePanel]

On 10/2/2022 at 3:33 PM, sftamx1 said:

I have a 1933 Hudson Terraplane convertible coupe. It has a Briggs Body tag on the firewall. It is my understanding that Hudson sent coupe bodies to Briggs to be converted into convertibles. Any way to find out how many conversions they did for Hudson,and what was involved? Did Briggs do this for any other car company in this time period? I ask this because when Briggs chopped off the tops, the windshield became only 7" tall, it appears that they removed the top section of the windshield frame where it was joined together.  (See pics) I have never seen a low priced production car with such a low looking "chopped" windshield. Maybe this was the only convertible conversion Briggs was doing during this time? Is this how other car companies created convertible coupes? Do the numbers on the tag give any info? Thanks for any help.

You may have already tried this, but I've noticed in many of the Automotive Industries magazines they discussed these types of changes in detail when it came to Hudson, Dodge and other makers of the era. My references only go into 1931 due to my need for research on my 30 Dodge, but I would bet if you were to look for copies of July 1932 to July 1933 issues you may find your answers.  Until then, you could always search digital collections online to see if they've uploaded anything that may shed light on it.

 

HathiTrust Digital Library is one of the most profound and best sites that I've found. I've had very good success with it and highly recommend getting used to if you haven't used it yet, and the best part is it's absolutely free. This is advise for anyone who is reading this who does any kind of research not just for automotive.

 

HathiTrust Digital Library | Millions of books online

 

Make sure you select the "full view only" box below the search window (snippet below).

As an example if I'm looking for info on Graham trucks I'll type in the words "Graham Brothers Truck" or sometimes I'll use other terms depending on what publication I'm looking for such as "Commercial Car Journal" or "Saturday Evening Post 1930" for ads or other types of articles. In other words, practice what works best for you until you find your answers. 

 

Edit: If you notice when you type in 1933 Hudson you'll get over a half million hits. On the left side you can then refine your search by year. If you select 1930-1939 it drops the hits down significantly to around 33K to choose from, then you can further refine by country, type of publication etc..

If you then change your search to 1933 Hudson Terrraplane it then consolidates even further to over 1000 hits. 

Here is a link to a gold nugget I found in just a few seconds:

#1 - Catalogs of Michigan-based automobile companies. ... Hudson Motor Car Co., Detroit, Mich. The new Hudson Super-six Pacemaker, 1933. - Full View | HathiTrust Digital Library

 

We live in a very blessed time today. What took auto researchers in the past years to locate now takes us a matter of minutes or seconds. 

 

Good luck, I am confident the answers are out there...

Dave

Edited October 7, 2022 by 30DodgePanel (see edit history)