Classic Cars of the '30s

The Luxurious Land Yachts of Motoring's Elegant Age

In 1991, Thirty years from now, will Cadillac El Doradoes and Pontiac Bonnevilles and Humber Super Snipes be sought after and restored and lovingly tucked up in museums? I am assaulted by doubt when I consider this proposition. But when we look in the other direction, and contemplate the scene thirty years behind us, we see the streets of the world's great cities dotted with automobiles that were obviously destined for immortality, and deserving of it, too. Why is this? What differences have grown in these three decades?

We are talking now about gentlemen's carriages built to serve two basic purposes: to transport four people, at most, in elegance over city streets and boulevards, and to carry them, in comfort and at high speed, over the roads from one city to another, or from the city to the seashore, the mountains or the lake country. These were not (text continued on page 48) multipurpose cars in the modern manner. Emphatically, they were not designed to be easy for Mom to drive to the supermarket, with trunk space big enough to accommodate the deer Dad lays low on his annual hunting trip, and upholstered with plastic wonder-fabrics proof against upended chocolate ice-cream cones. The men who laid down these cars had in mind a clientele for whom a butler ordered the groceries, whose venison was slain by a gamekeeper, and whose squalling young were in the charge of a nanny who would expect to be drawn and quartered if one of them got anywhere near an ice-cream cone. Certainly persons less fortunately situated bought these cars now and again; but so did those who conformed to the designers' specifications, and they were pleased with them.

These were the cars that dominated the mad years between the end of the bull market in 1929 and the beginning of World War II, when many who had kept their money saw the deluge ahead and were inclined to say, "I can't take it with me, and I'll be damned if I'll leave it here."

Gaiety counted; gaiety and movement. Mayor Jimmy Walker of New York so accurately reflected the acceptable attitudes of his day that he became almost a cliché; his sins, which were notable, were forgiven, indeed were hardly termed sins at all, because the citizens of whom he was the nominal servant so ardently wished they could behave as he behaved. "Keep your hands to the plow, dear friends," he would say as he terminated ten minutes of attendance at a City Hall meeting and skipped down the steps to the waiting Duesenberg town car and told the driver to which of the currently fashionable speakeasies he wished to be hurried.

It was not a time for stay-at-homes. It was a time for travel and sensation-hunting and moving as quickly as possible from place to place. There was plenty of room on the roads and some of the automobiles available were splendid.

These were the motorcars the Americans call Classic, the British, Vintage and Post-Vintage Thoroughbred: cars of the breed of the SJ Duesenberg, the 8-liter Bentley, the Hispano-Suiza Boulogne, the Marmon 16, the P. II Continental Rolls-Royce, the Types 41, 46, 50 and 57SC Bugatti. Some were quicker than the others; some more comfortable, more reliable, more beautiful; but looking at them today, sitting in them, driving them, riding in (continued on page 58)Classic Cars(continued from page 48) them, one is struck by one universal characteristic: privacy. Nearly always, the coachbuilders placed upon these great chassis bodies that offered privacy of a kind today's motorists, sitting in mobile greenhouses of tinted glass, know nothing about. Sedans, limousines, four-passenger coupes, berlines de voyage, coupes de ville, sometimes even open double-cowl phaetons offered rear-seat passengers shielding from public curiosity that ranged from a discreet shadowing to total privacy behind heavy silk curtains. Modern attempts on this concept have nearly always failed in elegance and taste because they were makeshift and they required arbitrary blanking off of large areas of glass, as when the late King Ibn Saud ordered twenty Cadillac limousines at $12,500 each, all five windows and the chauffeurs' divisions made of Argus glass, mirror-side out. The women of his harem could thus see and not be seen, but the automobiles must have glittered like circus wagons under the bright Arabian sun. The coachmakers of the Thirties did it better: I know a coupe 8-liter Bentley built with a rear quarter all blind except for a six-inch oval rear window of beveled plate. The saddle-brown leather of the seat is soft and smooth as only well-worn and cared-for leather can be, and there is room on it, and to spare, for two people, but not for three. That wasn't the idea. There are ashtrays and lighters and a mirrored vanity case holding perfume atomizers and the like; a small walnut cabinet on one side of the front-seat back holds a picnic set, a matching cache carries three cut-glass carafes for spirits. A foot-square table unfolds over each cabinet. A long way ahead, past the fellow driving, and his petite amie, is the short straight windshield, and one can look a little to one side and see out the front windows, but why bother?

This 8-liter Bentley was the last gasp of the original Bentley company of Great Britain, a gauntlet thrown in 1930 into the face of the approaching financial hurricane. W. O. Bentley, one of the giants of automobile design, had produced the heavy, immensely strong and quite fast 3- and 4-1/2-liter Bentleys that dominated sports-car racing in the late 1920s. Bentleys won the 24-Hour race at Le Mans in 1924, 1927, 1928, 1929 and 1930. In 1929 they did it in a style that has not been seen since: Four Bentley cars were entered, and twenty-four hours later four finished: first, second, third and fourth! Bentleys were sought after in those days, but they were expensive to buy -- and to make. The company never really rolled in money, and the 8-liter, with its twice-normal-size engine, was designed to intrude into the profitable luxury-carriage trade. The 220-horsepower engine was available in one of two wheelbases: 12 or 13 feet; the lightest model weighed three tons, and the chassis cost was just under $10,000. Mr. Bentley's purpose in design was to create a car that would carry luxury coachwork at 100-plus mph in silence. By the standards of the day he succeeded admirably. One hundred 8-liter chassis were produced and variously clothed by the many custom coach-builders of the time. The 8-liter was a formidable automobile. As late as 1959 an 8-liter Bentley was breaking records with speeds in excess of 141 mph.

Eight liters of engine ran another voiture de grand luxe of the period, the Hispano-Suiza Boulogne. The Hispano-Suiza company was made up of Spanish capital in the person of St. Damien Mateu and Swiss talent in the person of M. Marc Birkigt. Birkigt was gifted in the extreme, and had he had the flamboyance of Ettore Bugatti or Gabriel Voisin, he would have been as widely known as either of them. He was respected, indeed, among professionals. The firm began in 1904, and "Hisso" aircraft engines were much used by the Allies in the war of 1914--1918. Birkigt's concepts of luxury motorcars came to full fruition in the 1920s, when he designed the big Boulogne. The model was named after a race won by one of the prototypes, but nearly all the fifteen chassis produced were bodied as gentlemen's carriages. André Dubonnet of Paris, sometimes irreverently called the Apéritif King, commissioned a Boulogne that is still in existence and is still among the world's half-dozen most spectacular automobiles.

Dubonnet believed that a Boulogne would make an ideal mount for an early Targa Florio race. No one else thought so. The Targa was a long and brutal race on rock-studded roads through the Sicilian hills in which small, tough, hard-sprung sports and racing cars usually did well. But Dubonnet had the weight of gold on his side, and he ordered an alloy-and-tulipwood body from the aircraft company that built the famous Nieuport fighters. The alloy frame was handmade, and two-inch strips of tulipwood were riveted to it. Wood and rivets were then sanded and polished. The body was beautiful, and suitably light, but M. Dubonnet did not win the Targa Florio. He finished sixth, though, and the tulipwood car is now in England. The original mudguards were metal, but the car's present owner, a Mr. L. G. Albertini, found a Thames boatbuilder who knew about tulipwood and ran him up a set in exactly the style of the body.

The Model 37.2 Hispano-Suiza was at one time the most expensive automobile in the world, at $11,000 for the bare chassis, but the V-12 of 1931, which cost less, was a better automobile, indeed it must be included in any list of the best automobiles of all time. It was quite stable on the road, would move from 0 to 60 mph in twelve seconds -- still, thirty years later, an entirely respectable figure -- and would exceed 100 carrying almost any kind of coachwork. Further, it handled much like a modern automatic-transmission automobile: the engine had so much torque that top gear could be used from 4 miles an hour up!

Pride of place among American-built automobiles of this genre goes to the Duesenberg, and, among Duesenbergs, to the model SJ; and among SJs, to the double-cowl phaetons, in popular opinion but not in mine: I incline to Murphy Beverlys, Rollston convertible Torpedo Victorias or Opera Broughams, or Hibbard & Darrin convertible town cars, automobiles fit for fast passage over rain-swept autumn roads, with the dusk coming down like violet smoke, and a long way to go before midnight, and what of it?

Fred and August Duesenberg made Duesenbergs in a determined effort to produce the most luxurious fast car, or the fastest luxury car, in the world. They were successful in this aim: an SJ Duesenberg would do 104 miles an hour in second gear and 130 in top. After all, the car should have been fast: its first fame came as a race car. For years Duesenbergs were a fixed part of the scene at Indianapolis, and Jimmy Murphy, winning the French Grand Prix in a Duesenberg in 1921, set a record that still stands: No other American driving an American car has ever won a European grande épreuve.

Only about 470 J and SJ Duesenbergs were built. Their basic price range was $14,750 to $17,750. A very few ran up to $20,000 and perhaps half a dozen cost $25,000. (Only two were sold to American customers at that figure.) However, some owners gilt the lily. For example, a maharaja carpeted the rear of his Duesenberg with a Persian rug which had, he said, cost him "several times" the price of the car.

There was something about the Duesenberg, long, lean, narrow, wholly elegant, that brought out the sybarite in most people. Nothing could be added to the car mechanically with profit; even the dashboard was so completely fitted out that nothing like it exists today: a stop-clock was standard, so was a brake-pressure indicator; colored lights winked on automatically to remind the driver to add water to the battery or push the pedal that greased the car while it was in motion. A second, simplified instrument panel in the rear was not uncommon. Inhibited in that area, a man of (continued on page 108)Classic Cars(continued from page 58) means was likely to expand in the matter of interior luxury. Duesenbergs were done in raw silk, silver and ebony. They were done in alligator and sandalwood, in patent-leather and ivory. Sometimes the back seats were arranged as two overstuffed chairs, covered in West of England cloth and filled with down plucked from the breasts only of a fleet of geese. A good many bespoke coachmakers working on this side of the water stood ready to fit out Duesenberg chassis: Murphy, Rollston, Willoughby, Derham, LeBaron, Judkins, Weymann, Walker, Brunn, Holbrook. Of all these, only Derham is still in business, but doing more modifications than from-the-ground-up work. There are only three left of the great British firms, and two of those are affiliated with Rolls-Royce and thus busy. The first-line French and German houses are nearly all gone, and the Italians, now the world's paramount coachmakers, have so prospered working for their own great designers, and making specimen cars for Detroit, that they do not want bespoke business, even at the prices they charge: say $40,000 for a completely executed body to an original design. Even the oil pashas of the Arabian peninsula blink a bit at estimates in that range. The golden days when one could have a body made to one's own design for not much more money, in proportion, than the cost of a tailor-made over an off-the-peg suit, are a long way behind us.

Designers of the big classic motorcars kept the coachbuilders in mind when they laid down their specifications: long wheelbases, heavy chassis, engines remarkably powerful for the time. The Marmon 16-cylinder produced 200 horsepower. It was intended as a riposte to the Cadillac V-16 and the Duesenberg. It was a splendid automobile, and the 12-cylinder Marmon of 1934 was even better.

An item cataloged by Messrs. Rolls-Royce as "The 40--50 H.P. Continental Touring Saloon" was a kind of super Rolls-Royce, a Phantom II model modified to be faster than standard, and in other ways. The chassis was short, the steering column was low, and the springing and shock-absorbing arrangements were made for fast touring over dubious roads. The Continental cost about $12,250 in 1933, with the standard four-passenger sedan body.

Ettore Bugatti of France clearly felt that he was approaching the ultimate in a gentleman's carriage when he designed a coupe de ville, or town car, on his own Type 41 chassis. The Type 41 Bugatti, one of the biggest automobiles ever built -- its wheelbase equaled a London bus', and the engine was twice as big as a Cadillac's -- was conceived as transport eminently suitable for kings. There is some reason to believe that M. Bugatti did, at the beginning, consider actually restricting the sale of the model to kings. He relented, and Types 41, or Royales, were made available to any ordinary tycoon who was willing to spend $20,000 for the chassis and half as much more for the body -- providing M. Bugatti approved of the man. (Legend insists he refused to sell a Royale to the late King Zog of Albania because he didn't like his manners.)

Only seven Bugatti Royales were made. Two were coupes de ville, or coupes Napoleon, tiny but luxurious cabines for two passengers at one end, seven feet of bonnet ending in a silver rampant elephant radiator-mascot, at the other. The one M. Bugatti kept for his own use had the longest front mudguards ever made.

The market for $30,000 motorcars slackened, so Bugatti made a slightly smaller version of the Type 41, the Type 46, a standard big straight-eight-cylinder automobile. It offered useful scope to the coachbuilders of France (Bugatti himself liked the Type 46 so much that he kept it in production until World War II closed the factory), and so did the Type 50, a similar model carrying a more powerful engine. The Paris firm Million-Guiet built bodies for Types 46 and 50 Bugattis that might have been called ménage à trois coupes: they carried three people, driver and one passenger in front, the other passenger sitting sideways in the rear, with a splendid view out the slotlike rear window, and a big triangular cushion on which to rest her feet.

The Type 57SC Bugatti, the peak of the company's seventy-odd models, the result of collaboration between Ettore Bugatti and his son Jean, was put on the market toward the end of 1937. It produced about 200 horsepower, had a top of 130 miles an hour--fabulous for the time--and was remarkably secure and roadable at high speeds. The chassis invited low, lean coachwork. A 57SC Bugatti was one of the Thirties' most desirable possessions.

Packard and Pierce-Arrow, who made such impressive limousines and touring cars, didn't offer many coupes, but both built lovely victorias and convertible sedans on V-12 chassis. So did Lincoln, also on a V-12, and there were splendid big Lincoln double-cowl phaetons.

The Pierce-Arrow Silver Arrow, aluminum-bodied, was much in advance of its time. Packard offered an interesting range of custom bodies, set out in a catalog so lush that it cost the company $50 a copy to produce it. One of the last phaetons made by an American manufacturer was a Packard, turned out in 1939 for Franklin Roosevelt and armored to be proof against anything up to 50-caliber machine-gun fire. Its cost wasn't released, but a Manchurian war lord, Chang Tso-lin, paid $35,000 for an armored Twin-Six sedan.

Gabriel Voisin made a unique approach to the 12-cylinder engine, unique in the precise meaning of the word: nobody else ever did what he did, which was to put 12 cylinders in line in a production car. (One 12 in-line Packard was built, but never put into production.) This double-six engine was so long that it protruded into the driver's compartment, but the required length of hood enchanted the bodybuilders, and some noble carriages were laid down to take advantage of it. Voisin made V-12s, too, and his Sirocco Sports sedan on that chassis, low, squared, flat-topped, knife-edged, was a soaring expression of the squared-off style currently being talked of as nouvelle vague.

Few now alive have ever seen a Bucciali, more's the pity. It was made in France, but in the Thirties, too late in the century. The pinch of depression was on the rich English, the maharajas, the Rhineland steel-masters. French tycoons were inclining to something comparatively unostentatious when their petites amies needed new cars. It was a time of stress. Even the Hungarians were slowed down, and mad young things in Budapest were saying, "Szereinèm ha megengedhetnèm magamnak hogy ugy èljek mint ahogy èlek!" or, "If only we could afford to live the way we do!" Still, the big Bucciali cars stunned the Paris Salon. The power plant was a V-16 of aluminum and it glistened under the lights, engine-turned, like the inside of a cigarette case, everywhere. Even the blades of the fan were engine-turned. The Bucciali was very long indeed, and very low, the biggest front-wheel-drive motorcar ever built. There was nothing lithe or graceful about it, and one viewer is supposed to have said that it looked like "a bank-vault on wheels."

Daimler of England made a V-12 car of the same genre: tremendously long bonnet, blind rear-quarter coupe body, high wheels, a 150-inch wheelbase and the roof of the car just three feet, six inches from the ground! A good many Mercedes-Benz looked like that, too, built on the 540K chassis, a big straight-eight equipped with a "demand" supercharger, one that cut in and out at the driver's whim, and blew, when it was blowing, through the carburetor, with a shrill zombie scream. The 540K was heavy and there was nothing astonishing about its acceleration, but once under way it would cruise all day, solid as a battleship, in the 80s and 90s, and it would do 106 mph with a little runup. It had the edge, there, on such American classics as the Cadillac V-16, most of which would not show 90 miles an hour, or the famous first-model Cord, the L-29, which was reluctant to do much more than 75, for all its dash.

The V-16 Cadillac ran as high as $7850 in price, and still it's doubtful that General Motors ever made a dollar's profit on one of them. The car was a prestige item. For some, it was even more of a status symbol, or a more satisfactory one, than a Duesenberg: When one said Cadillac 16 one was offering an almost palpable rating; the owner of a V-16 clearly ranked a V-12 man.

The Models 810 and 812 Cord -- the round-nose, disappearing-headlights ones -- were among the most beautiful automobiles ever built in America. The Cord was short-lived: a hundred hand-built models were made for the 1935 Auto Show and the firm was out of business by 1937. The rarity of the car was early established: More than twenty of the first hundred handmades were stripped and burned immediately after the show, on the ground that the cost of finishing them would have been too great. The Cord looked as if it had been born on the road, one admirer said, and even today the entry list of almost every concours d'élégance held in this country will show one or more Cords looking as new as they did the day they left the showroom. Probably only the original Lincoln Continentals, among American cars, are so admired and carefully tended.

The German firm of Maybach had made engines for the great raiding airships of World War I, and the 12-cylinder Maybach Zeppelin was another of the great massive carriages of the 1930s, solid, beautifully made, comparatively rare, like the Horch. The Italian Isotta-Fraschini was another, and the Minerva of Belgium. A few years ago I saw a Minerva limousine so big that it ran on doubled rear wheels, like a truck; and the jump seats, usually little folding things, were overstuffed club chairs!

There were smaller cars of the 1930s that wore a great air of chic: Delage, Delahaye, Talbot, Darracq, Hotchkiss, Stutz. Lagonda (made in England and named after a river in Ohio), but they had already begun to move away from the lushness of the golden times toward simple utility. There are cars being made today that are vastly superior in comfort and controllability to anything the 1930s knew: the Rolls-Royce, the new Lincoln Continental, the Mercedes-Benz 300, for example. The Jaguar XK-E, the Chrysler 300G, the Ferrari 250 GT, the Maserati 3500, the Aston Martin DB4 are all faster than anything made before World War II. But no one of them, shining with glass, can, for all its virtues, replace one of the shadowed, high-riding gentlemen's carriages of three decades ago, stiffly sprung, to be sure, a handful to drive, yes, but fascinating still for what they were and for what they recall of the vanished age in which they moved.