Disturbing photo……..modified Pierce Arrow’s……..

[edinmass]

Ok, stole these from somewhere else……….look close. Try and ID the cars…….especially the cut up custom bodied car………..🤯🤬😱

[Marty Roth]

 1942, Dad was working at Todd Shipyards in Bayonne, NY, but also moonlighting, working part time for mom's uncle. Among his other businesses, Uncle Benny had two operations in one of his companies. One was that of constructing new tires for military-related vehicles. The other was recapping tires for local business, doctors, etc. Transporting tires, both military and civilian, recaps or carcasses, were by use of (as I was told) a repurposed 1934 Pierce-Arrow which had been turned into a stake-bodied truck.

[zepher]

Well, if Pierce hadn't made their cars so stout, they wouldn't have been used for truck like duties after they were 'old'.

It is a shame to see what someone did to these cars but at the time they were just 'old cars'.

 

Photos like these just make me appreciate so much more, all of the cars that did survive in tact.

Edited April 14, 2023 by zepher (see edit history)

[34LaSalleClubSedan]

2 hours ago, edinmass said:

Ok, stole these from somewhere else……….look close. Try and ID the cars…….especially the cut up custom bodied car………..🤯🤬😱

Maybe the old one a V-Windshield LeBaron??? 1932????

[Grimy]

OUCH!  You really know how to hurt us Pierce guys....

[pont35cpe]

The wreck is a `35 Pontiac.

[George K]

Nice trucks. Really like the dually. Heavy cars make good trucks. I’m sure they made money hauling crashed or dead cars. Sign of the times.

[dodge28]

It may not seem nice but it has to taken into context,

[John E. Guitar]

There was a Silver Ghost in Yass that had been given a similar treatment. 

[EmTee]

The "Lubritorium" sounds like an interesting place.  I wonder if Crown Royal was available...? 

 

[alsancle]

Two of the best looking Pierce Arrows I have ever seen!

[edinmass]

14 minutes ago, alsancle said:

Two of the best looking Pierce Arrows I have ever seen!

 

Yes, and they would go great in your collection, espicially since the only car you have that runs is one I fixed.........seems a few Pierce Arrow tow trucks would get your collection "moving along"! 😎

[8E45E]

This car would have been a prime candidate to recreate it:

 

Craig

[oldcarfudd]

Years ago, there was a series of novels whose main character, a loosely-self-employed sorta-detective named Travis McGee, drove a baby-blue Silver Ghost turned into a pick-up truck.  These cars must hav been what inspire the author.

[TAKerry]

Thanks for posting Ed, I love seeing period photos, these are especially cool. That guy must have really loved his PA trucks. 

[60FlatTop]

Those cars were lucky. In the mid to late 1930s the auto manufacturers looked at used cars as direct competition to new car sales. "The factory man" had a regular route. Dressed in a suit and carrying a sledge hammer he would disable trade ins by smashing the radiator  and cracking the block. Repairs would be beyond the value of the car and open one more space for a new car sale.

 

The cars pictured probably escaped through some of the good old American trickery of the times. A friend told me there were ways to get a gentle tap with the sledge, kind of a ceremonial thing.

 

The manufacturers certainly had no interest in used cars. Reading My Years With General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan will give insight into the efforts in helping the dealer network develop the used car market as a profit center. Sloan and Earle championed that.

[alsancle]

3 hours ago, edinmass said:

 

Yes, and they would go great in your collection, espicially since the only car you have that runs is one I fixed.........seems a few Pierce Arrow tow trucks would get your collection "moving along"! 😎

 

I was going to give you a snappy comeback until I realized you were fairly close to correct.  I do have one other car that runs and am praying I have another by the end of the month.  If we had done better at Mark Smith's the ratio would have been going the wrong way.

[edinmass]

Pry your wallet open with a ten foot long crowbar and I will get them all running. The more cash you send, the faster it gets done. 

Edited April 14, 2023 by edinmass (see edit history)

[Leif in Calif]

Pretty common in period. I once owned a CG Imperial (or parts of one) that had become a hay wagon. 

[58L-Y8]

Apparently Try-Me Service Station was also a Studebaker dealership.  Note the mid-1930's Studebaker 'Red-Ball' logo signs, a new 1937 Dictator sedan and the "5 Day Driving Trial" come-on promotion.  Used luxury cars converted to pick-up, tow trucks, fire trucks and crew/hose cars was just folks being practical, making do with the resources available.  My first encounter in the 1960's with a 1932 Pierce-Arrow 12 was a sedan that had been converted to a fire truck, weathering away in a local junkyard.

[wayne sheldon]

When I was in high school, my dad found out about a Pierce Arrow limousine turned into a tow truck. This in a small town in an out of the way area in Northern California. The old man that owned it had refused to sell it for many years, however, age had caught up with him and his property put up for sale. We went and looked it over. The Pierce was said to be a 1919.

Whoever did the conversion was careful to not hurt the car very much. He built the boom such that it went out the back window! One would open the rear doors to work the manual boom. 

My dad decided he really wanted that massive car! But he was too slow to move on it. The local realter made a "back door" deal to take the car for part of his commission on the property sale. Then he sold the car to a local yokel for almost exactly what my dad wanted to offer for it. A few years later, I accidentally ran into the car, in pieces, sitting in a local side street! The local guy had taken the car completely apart, coating everything in poorly done gray primer, and scattered it all over his front yard and street!

It is one of many cars I saw so many years ago, and wonder if anybody ever did get the poor thing put back together?

[JACK M]

17 hours ago, wayne sheldon said:

It is one of many cars I saw so many years ago, and wonder if anybody ever did get the poor thing put back together?

Probably a Toyota now.

[1935Packard]

The "try-me service station" seems to have been in Dundalk, MD, and the family is still in the local car business. 

https://www.dundalkeagle.com/news/local/ed-and-gus-thompson-inducted-into-madaf-hall-of-fame/article_679a9f6a-3f3d-58e1-b209-dd6a93c1718c.html

[Den41Buick]

Thank goodness it wasn’t a Packard.

[Ozstatman]

35 minutes ago, Den41Buick said:

Thank goodness it wasn’t a Packard.

Plenty of those around. This one is now in the Australian National Motor Museum in the Adelaide Hills where the tow truck operated. Even a photo of it "in action" back in the day.

Edited April 15, 2023 by Ozstatman (see edit history)

[edinmass]

2 hours ago, Den41Buick said:

Thank goodness it wasn’t a Packard.

Never……..they wanted the horsepower and good looks only a Pierce could provide. 🤔

[alsancle]

54 minutes ago, edinmass said:

Never……..they wanted the horsepower and good looks only a Pierce could provide. 🤔

Maybe they just wanted a car that had ball bearings in the spring shackles?

[pmhowe]

Pierce cars that no one wanted any longer were not only converted to tow trucks. When I was a teenager, I was looking for parts for my '29 Pierce. The biggest source for me, living in central Mass, was a junkyard in Rhode Island. It had six or eight Pierces of the vintage of interest to me, plus Packards and other neat cars - even a Cunningham - the only one I have ever seen.

 

For engine parts, the local sawmills were a good source. There were three sawmills within a twenty mile radius of me that used Pierce straight eight engines for their power. I remember more the fun of talking with the people who owned them than I remember what parts I bought. I think it was fun for them, too.

 

One of the problems the straight eights had was that the water jacket covers tended to rust out. I never found a used one that was useful. I ended up buying a new one from the Seagrave Firetruck people.

 

Although the water jacket covers rusted, Pierce used polished stainless steel bolts (I think 3/16" x 3/4") for the water jacket. That's class! Interestingly, only about half the engines I saw had them. The others were chromed. I'll bet the early eights had the stainless and the later ones the chrome. 

 

Phil

[George K]

There are so many photos. There must be a website. Back in the late 1970’s I was looking for old car and found a Twin Six Packard wrecker. Never took pictures but wonder where it went.

[edinmass]

The junk yard was called Bill’s……….two of the Pierce Arrows you remember from the yard were cut up in my shop years ago……..they were picked over and very rusty, but we managed to save some parts.

[George K]

You ever scrap one of these. Old cars had to be junk before they became collectible.

[edinmass]

Another sin……..A Springfield Rolls cut down…………..fortunately, the cut down cars in these two photos still have a legacy………

 

 

Edited April 16, 2023 by edinmass (see edit history)

[Dandy Dave]

On 4/14/2023 at 10:20 AM, 60FlatTop said:

Those cars were lucky. In the mid to late 1930s the auto manufacturers looked at used cars as direct competition to new car sales. "The factory man" had a regular route. Dressed in a suit and carrying a sledge hammer he would disable trade ins by smashing the radiator  and cracking the block. Repairs would be beyond the value of the car and open one more space for a new car sale.

 

The cars pictured probably escaped through some of the good old American trickery of the times. A friend told me there were ways to get a gentle tap with the sledge, kind of a ceremonial thing.

 

The manufacturers certainly had no interest in used cars. Reading My Years With General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan will give insight into the efforts in helping the dealer network develop the used car market as a profit center. Sloan and Earle championed that.

When the local Ford dealer was able to send new a Fordson Tractor to a farmer who traded in his Horses or Mules the critters went right to the glue factory. If the farmer wanted his team back because he was unhappy with the tractor for any reason it was too late. 

[edinmass]

As a kid I did some farm work for “Old Farmer Freddy”. He had a jubilee ford tractor but the first thirty years plowed the fields with horses…………old New England  dairy farmer. Hard as nails and concrete. Hardest working man I ever knew. Never left a 20 mile radius of the farm for his life until his mid 70’s. Old school American…….I sure miss him.

[58L-Y8]

Does anyone know what that large sedan with the white top at right might have been?

[Dandy Dave]

35 minutes ago, 58L-Y8 said:

Does anyone know what that large sedan with the white top at right might have been?

Oh yes. That's in line for the next wrecker. 😊

[George K]

Once I started looking the more I like them. I drove a shop built tube boom wrecker as a kid. You have to remember recycling isn’t new it’s an economic reality. 

[George K]

Here’s a Locomobile from another AACA topic. How about that telephone booth cab.

[alsancle]

14 minutes ago, George K said:

Here’s a Locomobile from another AACA topic. How about that telephone booth cab.

George, you have proven that locomobile makes a more attractive tow truck than Pierce arrow.

Edited April 16, 2023 by alsancle (see edit history)

[Walt G]

12 hours ago, edinmass said:

The junk yard was called Bill’s

On Macondry (SP?) Street in Valley Falls, R.I. AN absolutely wonderful place. Drove up there in the rain in about 1973 in my 1941 Packard 120 woody with two friends. Doors swelled up so it was hard to get out. We parked in front on the street and I asked the proprietors to not cut it up while we we were inside looking around and their reply with a smile was that it didn't have enough sheet metal to be of any interest!  They had covered buildings there as well to store removed parts and one had something that sent a chill in my bones - it was a model T hearse in pristine condition that had a very small body as it was made for children - the great flu pandemic in the teens took the lives of so many children . I taught kids the same age as those that passed away so many decades ago and seeing that got me so emotional and my hands shaking my friends wondered if I would be ok.

Edited April 16, 2023 by Walt G (see edit history)