This is the continuation of a look at many of the amazing very early automobiles I was privileged to see in Arizona this January. See Part 1 if you missed it for a more full story of how these cars came to be in one place. Taken together, I considered them to be a fascinating survey of how cars rapidly evolved in the wide open auto market of the early 20th century. These articles will be something of a primer on these early cars, which you’ll hopefully find interesting even if you already know a lot more than I did before researching them.
Click on the links for the auction page which has more about the particular car and many high quality photos. Enjoy!
1914 Chevrolet Series H-2 “Royal Mail” Roadster ($36k). It’s a two-seater Chevrolet, but it’s sure not a Corvette! Among the major marques, Chevrolet started relatively late in 1911. It initially offered both larger expensive cars and smaller inexpensive cars. With the huge success of Ford’s very cheap cars around that time, Chevrolet settled into a role of offering inexpensive cars that were a tad upscale from Ford with more available features. Chevy would crack the Top 8 makers in 1916, be bought by GM in 1918 and were consistently #2 after 1919.
In 1912-13 Chevy offered only a six cylinder. In 1914, they added the 24hp 171c.i. four used in the auction car to better compete with Ford on price (though Fords were always somewhat cheaper). After 1915, they would drop the six and make only fours until 1929, when they switched to all sixes.
1916 Pierce-Arrow Model 48-B-2 Touring ($156k). This Pierce-Arrow cuts a modern figure for its time with a nickel-plated grille (brass was on the way out, but chrome not yet being used), rounded upper fender surfaces, and now-trademark-for-Pierce fender-mounted headlights. As with the Model 66 in the last article, it was named for the official horsepower rating from its 525c.i.T-head straight six, a displacement not nearly so extreme but still pretty huge.
Note the tires on some of these cars are white, which is the natural state of rubber. Many early cars had these before coloring tires black became common practice in the latter half of the Aughts. Some owners probably still preferred white tires in the Teens. Whitewalls would come along in the 20’s. See Tom Halter’s fascinating series on the history of white wall tires, ig you haven’t already.
1917 Detroit Electric Model 68 Brougham ($78k). It’s not commonly appreciated that electric cars were a major part of the early American car market. Many of the very first cars marketed were electric and even by 1912 in a rapidly maturing industry, 30% of cars were battery-powered. It makes sense in the context of ICE engines at that time, which could be noisy, dirty, and temperamental. Electric cars particularly appealed to women motorists, who liked their quiet, easy operation and crankless starting.
Detroit Electric was one of the prominent makes selling BEV’s, known for its well-trimmed interiors evoking the parlor of a fine home (remember, appeal to women). Driven with folding tillers, a brake pedal, and a solitary gauge (for battery charge), the luxurious cabin bears little resemblance to a conventional car. Elon Musk would probably love it.
Electric starters and increasingly reliable, powerful, and refined gasoline engines gradually edged out electric, which had quite limited range and power with the batteries of the time. Detroit Electric maintained a niche market, though, building their last cars in 1939.
1917 Cadillac Type 55 Victoria ($44k) Cadillac has evolved quite a bit in the ten years since the 1907 model in part 1. This is particularly true in the powertrain. In 1912, Cadillac offered the first electric starter. In 1915, Cadillac introduced the first mass-produced V8 engine making 70hp from 314c.i., which we can see as a significant advancement in engine output after reading about the preceding cars in this series. This excellent, smooth engine set the V8 up for its future dominance.
Once Cadillac was part of GM in 1909, they were designated as the top-priced division and aimed squarely at the luxury market. When the V8 came out, smaller engines were dropped.
The styling and proportions of this handsome coupe were clearly the direction cars were headed for the next couple of decades, but the interior configuration is not at all. It features a single seat for the driver with a two-person bench to his right and slightly aft. To the left of the bench seat is a cooler for ice and beverages. There’s also a small jump seat and a rumble seat out back. What exactly was the intended use for this car???
Jay Leno has a very similar 1918 Cadillac Victoria Coupe, unrestored original. He doesn’t really answer my question, but fascinating episode nonetheless.
1919 Kissell Model 6-45 Speedster ($123k). If you were in the U.S. and wanted a sports car in the 20’s, with the import market virtually non-existent at that point, there weren’t a lot of choices. Kissel came out with their 6-45 Speedster in 1919, this black example being the earliest known survivor. “Speedster” was never a standardized body style but rather a commonly used term for sporty models of cars in the early automotive period, generally referring to a light, two seat, open car built for speed. I was ignorant of Kissel as a marque, though I’ve learned that their 6-45 Speedster was popular in the limited U.S. sports car world of the 20’s. It wasn’t popular enough to weather Kissel through the Depression, though. They were an early casualty in late 1930.
Propulsion came from their 61hp 331c.i. L-head straight six, giving it power not at all exciting by later standards, but decent for the time.
One detail that caught my eye was a window in the cowl area. It’s positioned above the pedals. Is it to show those off? I’m thinking it provides light so drivers can see the pedal area better. I couldn’t find any online reference to it and at any rate it’s not a feature that caught on.
Another feature that didn’t catch on (for some reason!) are jump seats that slide out from the body and looking incredibly unsafe exciting!
This the Hotel Galvez at its grand opening in 1911, showing a bit of the motoring life of the time. Today, the hotel is still operating and quite beautiful, though it seems the world it was born into is long gone, especially the quaint automobiles and horse-drawn holdouts. Or is it?
A parallel occurred to me when I was at the Houston Livestock Show And Rodeo. This is an annual three week event held every March at the Texans Stadium, which functions like a State Fair. There is an official fall State Fair in the Dallas area, too, but Texas is big enough for two. The stadium complex becomes a small city, with officials, vendors, exhibitors, etc. having need of getting around the large area. There are roadways throughout and they can get busy, but no regular cars are allowed. Transportation is by golf carts and such, with the occasional horse, too. Hmmm…vehicles with minimal weather protection and maximum speed of 30-40 mph powered by 1 to 4 cylinder ICE’s, sometimes BEVs’ and sometimes horseflesh. Sounds familiar! There are even some intersections, which are managed by staff directing traffic, just like the old days.
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Come back for Part 3 next week and we’ll look at Classics from the Twenties.
One of my grandmothers, born in the 1890s, told a story of a clergyman of her family’s acquaintance who had traded his horse and buggy for an electric car and kept running it into walls and such. The car had no horse sense, you see. I expect they sold a lot of them to people who weren’t mechanically inclined.
LOL! No horsesense. That’s hilarious. Perhaps that is still the reason behind so many motor vehicle accidents.
And nowadays we have cars with electronic attempts at ‘horse sense’. And a lot of drivers that could use some.
I remember my mother telling about her father (1872-1965) telling the car to gee-up when going up hills, back in the early days. I suspect the new machines took quite some getting used to.
The Sothebys listing for the Cadillac victoria says:
I’m guessing the orignal owner didn’t drive, or preferred not to, and this was set up with the assumption she would usually be in the back seat. (The rumble seat is not itself unusual.)
To give a non-risqué answer to what the Cadillac’s configuration was intended for, I’ll speculate. Passenger cars were commonly called “pleasure cars” in this era, but some people were using them for their work. I think this body style was sometimes called a doctor’s coupe? So, I’d imagine, a doctor could use it to make housecalls and on Sunday he could cram family members in for a drive in the country. A sedan might have made more sense, but closed cars were significantly more expensive than open ones, so a closed coupe might have been usefully more affordable. Just a possibility.
My thought was that the coupe body style as it was then was too short to allow a full back seat and a full front seat, so they devised the staggered arrangement with a jump seat. Still, it seems like a front bench seat with jump seats in the back, like a modern extended cab pickup would be more user friendly. I can’t think of any period cars that did it that way, though.
The auction listing for that specific car explains who it was originally purchased for.
Yes. I tried to delete my comment after seeing your post, but evidently it didn’t take.
Ah, the end of the automotive “Brass Era” coincided with the onset of the “Great War”, later known as “World War 1”. Beginning in 1914 there began a world wide shortage of manufactured brass with the production of brass being diverted to military purposes such as artillery shell casings and ammunition brass shell casings. The use of automotive brass plummeted as military brass uses exponentially increased. Automotive brass usage was initially replaced by nickel and by nickel plating, hence the short-lived “nickel era” occurred, only then to be replaced in the mid 1920’s chrome plating ( initially pioneered by Oldsmobile in late 1925 for the1926 models, with a manual process, then later replaced by an Olds patented process in 1929) by the more visually superior, mirror like, brighter (not yellowish), and more wear resistant chrome plating processes. Cheers.
Thanks for the extra historical context. That makes sense. Im surprised nickel wasn’t also in high military demand.
What fascinates me about the cars of this era (besides the cars themselves, of course) is how so many good-sized American cities had a thriving automobile company, and sometimes several.
The Cadillac is what was then known as an Opera Coupe. It was meant for a short drive downtown for one or two couples to arrive to a full-dress event in style. What has been re-purposed as a cooler was once a compartment for a top hat. For one wore tails and a top hat to the opera. If one couple went, the lady had the back seat to herself and enough room to emerge gracefully in her big dress. If they really wanted to get fancy, the chauffer drove and the couple sat in the back. If two couples went, the ladies shared the back and the second gent used the jump seat. The ride was short, anyway. This car was built for a lifestyle that doesn’t exist anymore.
That is fascinating!
No, it’s not an opera coupe, it’s a four-passenger victoria whose normal front passenger seat has been replaced by a jump seat. (The standard passenger seat also folded forward for rear seat access, but it was more substantial.)
The early white car tires were white because the white zinc oxide used in processing the rubber produced the whiteness. Zinc oxide was not cheap and with the expansion of refining petroleum to make gasoline and such it was learned that carbon black, readily available from the refining process, could replace the ZnO. Thus along about 1918 or so white tires were replaced by black ones in short order.
Didn’t know that. I thought it was found that carbon black made the tires last a lot longer.
My mother, who was born in 1915, used to visit an aunt and uncle who lived on Spadina Road in Toronto. Lady Eaton, heiress to the Eaton department store fortune, lived in her estate on the west side of Spadina. My mother membered seeing Lady Eaton driving by in her Baker electric. It was similar to the Detroit electric shown here. Mom said Lady Eaton drove it until at least the late 20s, and probably into the 30s.
My mother lived in a small town in Ontario, where her father was a doctor. When she was little he kept a “cutter” (a one horse open sleigh) for winter house calls outside of town. He also had a Model T, which was replaced by a new Model T in 1926. By 1933 when he died, he had a second car that was just used for his work. My grandmother never drove, but by that time my mother and her older brother were both driving, so it was useful to have an additional car. It was a Plymouth Business Coupe and he used it through the winter.
Interesting stories. That is exactly the type of person one would imagine driving an early electric car.
My grandfather’s first car was a 32 Plymouth, but I think it was a roadster. Bought it new.
If I remember the history correctly, it was Chevrolet that bought General Motors, not the other way around. That was how Billy Durant got a second chance at running General Motors, before being kicked out for good a few years later.
I’m sure you’re correct, depending on how one uses the word “bought”. Durant started Chevrolet after leaving GM, and used the success of that operation to buy enough shares of GM to gain control and become president, then bringing Chevrolet into GM a couple years later.
>>>No, it’s not an opera coupe
The car is literally called opera coupe in the auction listing.
https://hymanltd.com/vehicles/5830-1917-cadillac-type-55-opera-coupe/