The Andersons' Automobile Attic

Larz and Isabel Anderson bought their first car, a Winton runabout, in 1899. They never sold it. Over the years they acquired many more cars and kept most of them, too. Each car had not only a name but a motto. This 1905 Electromobile, with British chassis and body by Kellner of Paris, was called "Port Bonheur" (Bringer of Happiness) and carried the motto Ca va sans dire (It goes without saying). In 1927, when their old cars had become noteworthy, the Andersons enjoyed showing them to visitors in the carriage house at their estate in Brookline, Massachusetts, creating one of the first auto musuems. The core of the Andersons' fleet remains with today's Larz Anderson Auto Museum, which can rightfully boast "America's oldest car collection."

On July 23rd, the Museum hosted its annual open house for members and guests at its off-site storage facility. At this location are kept the Anderson cars and other Museum collection cars not on display, as well as cars that have been donated to the Museum for sale, in support of ongoing operations. Development manager Andy Jeffrey provided commentary on many of the cars, including this original 1959 Lancia Aurelia Spyder from the permanent collection. Anderson cars, in addition to the Electromobile, included the 1899 Winton runabout "Pioneer," Ca Ira (It will go), and a 1908 Bailey Electric that was Isabel Anderson's favorite, "Le Bonne Fee" (The Good Fairy), Tourjours prete et fidele (Always ready and faithful). A "self drive" car, the Bailey nonetheless included a perch at the back for the footman. One of the Andersons' later cars, a 1926 Lincoln, "The Emancipator," motto Son courage fait sa force (Its courage is its strength), carries a rare body by Brookline coachbuilder George W. McNear.

Other notable cars in the Museum collection included a 1959 Rolls-Royce shooting brake, one of four converted by Harold Radford of London, and a large Renault from the 1920s. The circa-1928 Vivastella is a six-cylinder long chassis car looking for an appropriate body. The late Arthur Fiedler, long time conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra, loved fire engines. The Museum now owns a 1937 Ford pumper that was given to Fiedler by his son.

Cars in the Museum's collector car sales program were as varied as a 1920 Fiat 501, an early Datsun 240Z and Jaguar XJ6 saloons from 1971 and 1986. To inquire about these and other cars for sale, email Andy Jeffrey.

The Larz Anderson Auto Museum is open every day except Monday and major holidays, 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. The current exhibit is L'automobile - A Century of Innovation and Style celebrating the French automobile industry. The Museum is located at 15 Newton Street in Brookline.

Let's Get This Straight

Wayne Graefen spotted this long-nose beastie while combing the Texas scrapyards (it's an honourable profession - somebody's got to do it). Doubly intriguing is what seems to be the anchor for a sidemount spare. Wayne describes the machine as a hot rod, but what to make of that long hood? He muses "how great it would be if I could only find one of the inline 12-cylinders that my father-in-law insists he saw as a young man." Inline 12? Was there such a thing?

Inline engines are pervasive. Amost from the beginning there were inlines, in two, three, four, then six cylinders. By 1915, Hudson was touting itself as the "world's largest manufacturer of six-cylinder cars." In 1917, Hudson introduced the Super Six, featuring a counterbalanced crankshaft for unprecedented smoothness. The inline, or straight, eight didn't arrive until a few years later.

Eights in a vee configuration were common - Rolls-Royce built a few from 1904 to 1906, and by 1917 they were ubiquitous in the New World from such makers as Apperson, Cole, Cadillac, even Chevrolet. It was 1920, however, before the straight eight took hold, in Italy (Isotta-Fraschini), Belgium (Miesse) and Britain (Leyland). America's first production straight eight was the Duesenberg Model A, introduced for 1922.

Straight eights have some built-in complications. Their long crankshafts are subject to flexing, which can result in fracture. Remedies include stengthening the crank (adding weight) or additional main bearings (adding friction - even a lubricated bearing has more resistance than no bearing at all). Packard made a major advance in 1924 with a symmetrical crankshaft that corrected the imbalance of earlier stright eights, making one of the smoothest engines of that time.

By 1930, virtually all American automakers featured straight eights, starting just above the low-priced range with Dodge, DeSoto and Pontiac. Hudson stretched the small Essex six to eight pots that year, and made it available in the low-priced Terraplane in 1933. A splash-lubricated engine, its derivatives were offered until 1952. Packard's Super Eight engine featured nine mains, and Buick's Valve-in-Head "Fireball" attacked the eight's other Achilles heel, uneven fuel distribution, with Compound Carburetion in 1941. Thirsty and somewhat difficult to tune, Compound Carburetion was not universally revered. The last American straight eights, Packard and Pontiac, gave up after 1954, though some European manufacturers briefly soldiered on.

But what about the inline twelve? Yes, Wayne, there was a straight twelve. For that we can thank Gabriel Voisin, the idiosyncratic French aviation engineer who also built automobiles. Voisin's cars were as eccentric as he was, the Aérodyne C25 being a case in point. In contrast to the car's slippery shape, Voisin added some external braces to strengthen the front fenders, and topped it off with his characteristic laminated aluminum bird mascot. Most Voisins were sixes, but a few V-12s were built from 1929 to 1931. In 1934, Voisin began experimenting with a straight twelve, made by coupling two 3-liter sixes nose-to-tail. His intent was to improve weight distribution, and to this end the engine extended far back into the passenger space. Two such cars were built, Voisin's own, an Aérosport Coupe, and one sedan. Production never materialized. Does anyone have a photo of the straight twelve engine?

The CarPort is grateful to Bud Gardner and his Encyclopedia of Eights for much of the knowledge in this installment. The Encyclopedia is a handy reference covering the basics of all the world's eight-cylinder automobile engines and will be published in electronic format later this summer. Contact Bud for pricing and ordering info.

Peace Dividend

World War II began to affect 1942 U.S. passenger cars even before the order came to suspend production by February. In October 1941, the War Production Board forbade the use of bright trim on other than bumpers and bumper guards. Plated parts could be used if painted over; Oldsmobile had perhaps the only ad showing a so-called "blackout car."

In contrast to Ford Motor Company and Chrysler Corporation, whose pre- and postwar cars we contemplated last week, the independent manufacturers didn't change their products much for 1946. Hudson, whose 1942 models adopted the industry trend for light, horizontal grilles, also followed fashion with a bolder, more complex style for 1946, but little else on the cars changed. Nash's postwar grille was bolder than the prewar item, but gave a better balanced effect, as the upper grille on the '42 looked a bit snooty. Packard changed hardly at all, making the delicate grille bars on the '42 marginally "stronger" for '46. And Studebaker offered only a continuation of the Champion model for four months until the all-new '47 cars were ready. Though austere, the carryover Champion was all but indistinguishable from the 1942 cars, whose upper-class models were attractively trimmed. The fact that the independents were working hard on all-new postwar cars probably accounts for their lack of effort to facelift the stopgap cars offered for 1946. Willys, on the other hand, dropped production of regular passenger cars until 1952.

The General Motors cars, however, were a mixed bag, many makes being exceptions to the similar-but-bolder-and-more-complex school. Chevrolet's 1946 grille was actually a bit simpler than 42's. Cadillac gave its 1946 grille bigger rectangles and reshaped lights from 1942's. Buick made minimal changes from 1942, adding just a horizontal vent at the top of the grille and emboldening the bars. Pontiac, whose 1942 face was a real mix of sizes and shapes, simplified the front of its 1946 cars, and Oldsmobile, whose '42 grille was truly bizarre (the middle bar was actually part of the bumper), also cleaned up its grille for '46, although the car had a permanent frown.

Perhaps we shall never know what the 1943 cars would have looked like, had there been such models. The 1946 facelifts were likely quick jobs, undertaken in a hurry when most of the styling effort was going into all-new 1947s, '48s and '49s. For posterity's sake, though, I wish there had been more '42s.

War Stories

Rich Miller recently sent me some photos of his new 1942 Mercury. A low mileage car from Colorado, it benefits from a recent restoration, enhanced by having led a sheltered life. The ornate dashboard plastic, for example, looks virtually new.

I've always had a fascination with 1942 cars. Because the model year was cut short by World War II, few of them saw traffic when new, and fewer still survived to be restored. The Mercury, in particular, had simple, yet elegant, ornamentation. Its grille showed the horizontal themes becoming popular, but light, almost dainty in execution. After the war, Mercury's face became bolder but "busier," even confused. I started to think about how other cars were transformed during the wartime absence of new models.

Older brother Lincoln also had a thin horizontal grille in 1942, but was given a heavier, grid-like grille for 1946. Ford, which had kept a vertical grille pattern in 1942, likewise became bolder in '46, but went horizontal in a much simpler fashion, with light red accents.

Chrysler also had a simple, elegant horizontal grille at the onset of war. Like competitor Lincoln, Chrysler "went busy" after the war, adopting a fine-mesh checkerboard grille that, while not unattractive, lost the gracefulness of the plain chrome bars. DeSoto's 1946 grille was no busier than the prewar item, but also bolder, and the car sadly lost the unique Airfoil disappearing headlights that had been '42's hallmark. Dodge, while not simple in 1942, did have a light, mostly horizontal grille pattern, but went for heavy rectangles in 1946, hardly an item of beauty. Plymouth, at least, effected simpler trim after the war, a grille of alternating width horizontal bars "cleaning up" the prewar kaleidoscope of shapes and angles.

Almost always the first year of a given design is "purest," and best stands the test of time. The "freshening" of subsequent seasons soon loses its novelty, and looks like the contrivance it is. One wonders what the 1943 cars would have looked like, had there been a new car season. Would they have looked like the "busy" '46s, or did the wartime hiatus affect the stylists' work in more ways than one?

Next week we'll look how the war affected the rest of the American passenger car industry.