The fascinating history of American cars . . .one story at a time.
Author: Deb Tracy
I am a reformed attorney who has returned to my first loves, American history and classic cars. Raised in a family of automobile fanatics, my Dad is one of those guys who can look at a set of tail lights and tell you what car they belong to and follow that with a story about one he owned. Forget the “new car” smell, I love the smell of old cars and old garages. My husband (retired law enforcement and former U.S. Marine) and I turned our hobby into a business a few years ago and now happily deal in classic cars and their various parts. We live in rural Nebraska with our amazing teenage daughter and a houseful of border collies.
Some of the more intriguing radiator badges are the ones that feature portraits such as the one of Teddy Roosevelt found on the Marmon Roosevelt and this one, found on the LaFayette:
In October of 1919, it was announced that a motor company was being formed to start manufacturing a new automobile in Indianapolis. It was called LaFayette Motors Co. and Charles Nash was the president.
1919 LaFayette Advertisement
The new automobile was named for the Marquis de Lafayette, the French aristocrat who fought with American colonists against the British during the American Revolutionary War. Lafayettewas a tremendous asset during the fight for American independence, providing tactical leadership and securing vital aid from France including troops and supplies. Lafayette spent that terrible winter at Valley Forge with George Washington, and they formed a lasting friendship. The Marquis even named his only son Georges Washington de Lafayette and famously said, “I gave my heart to the Americans and thought of nothing else but raising my banner and adding my colors to theirs.”
1921 LaFayette Advertisment
In light of the Marquis’ relationship with America, it is no surprise that someone in the automobile industry saw fit to honor his memory. One 1920 story states that the engineers and designers of the new automobile studied the memoirs of the “liberty-loving marquis” and that several refinements and appointments of the new V8-powered luxury car had a historic conception. The choice of materials such as silver and walnut woodwork were influenced by French art of the period. The radiator badge, like the one seen above, was a cameo of Lafayette. It featured onyx framed in silver and was said to resemble something made by 18th century craftsmen. The gracefully scrolled monogram used by Lafayette on his private stationary was used on the hub caps and hood ornament.
1936 LaFayette
The company moved to Wisconsin to cut costs but still struggled to make a profit and stopped production altogether in 1924. The name was revived by Nash during the ’30s, but no longer as a luxury car. It is a shame that the automobile didn’t experience greater success, because Lafayette certainly deserved the tribute.
When the government violates the people’s rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensible of duties.
This is a WWII GMC model DUCW, a 2.5-ton 6×6 amphibious vehicle that used six wheels on land and a propeller when in the water. Essentially sea-going trucks, they were crucial for ferrying supplies from ship to shore. The vehicles were naturally nicknamed Ducks, and Canadian war correspondent Dick Sanborn reported this incident in 1943:
During the invasion of Italy, when hundreds of ducks plied their way back and forth carrying anti-tank guns, mortars and ammunition across the Messina straits, a British destroyer raced cockily past one group. From the bridge twinkled a signal lamp in Morse. Deeply offended, the officer in charge of the ducks translated the message: “Quack, quack.”
The iconic greyhound pictured above is adorning a 1929 Lincoln. Of all the hood ornaments and radiator caps ever produced, the greyhound might be the one most reproduced. It is definitely “buyer beware” when it comes to the greyhound as even sellers frequently don’t know what they have. I picked up this greyhound radiator cap years ago:
The underside of the cap is marked “THE MURPHY CAP MFG BY RUPERT DIECASTING CORP KC MO.”
Rupert Diecasting was located in Kansas City until moving to Kentucky in the 1960s. I have been told that this cap was only produced in 1933, which makes it pretty rare. I haven’t been able to verify that, but it makes sense as I recently found a copyright infringement lawsuit that was filed against Rupert by Franklin Diecasting in 1933 regarding Franklin’s copyrighted “Greyhound Combination Ornament and Radiator Cap”. If you have any additional information on the Murphy Cap, I would love to hear from you. Contact me at americancarhistorian@gmail.com.
Velie’s story is an interesting one that I have written about before. Its founder, Willard Lamb Velie, was a grandson of John Deere and the Velie automobile was even sold through John Deere dealerships. In November of 1914, Velie hired a few “prominent ball tossers” to engage in some transcontinental touring in order to draw attention to their brand. All stopped off at the Velie plant in Moline before taking various routes to the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. They included Ivy Olson and Fred Carisch of the Cleveland American League Team and Walter Leverenz of the St. Louis Browns.
The ball players were driving 1915 models, and those were available in a Big Four, a Big Six and the Biltwel with a higher (40) horsepower 6-cylinder Continental engine.
Carisch is the best-known of these players. In 1923, he was coaching for Detroit alongside the legendary Ty Cobb and ended up playing in a game against Cleveland. Cobb had to resort to using the 41-year old Carisch as catcher after the third and last Detroit catcher was ejected from the game. Unfortunately, Detroit still lost to Cleveland, 10-7.
When Buick restyled the beautiful ’49 Buick for 1950, it made a change that continues to inspire strong emotion, both positive and negative. Buick replaced this beautiful grille . . .
. . . with this toothy beast:
The sales brochure referred to the new design as a “bumper-grille”, and it consisted of heavy-duty vertical bars that were attached to the bumper so that they both formed the grille and served as bumper guards. The bars, according to Buick advertisements, were heavy enough to absorb “normal impact” and individually replaceable to save money in the “unlikely event of damage” (now note the damage to the grille shown above).
Unfortunately, the bars each had a different part number and were not at all interchangeable, and that made stocking and replacing them relatively expensive. This diagram showing the part numbers and prices was found in the 1958 edition of Motor’s Flat Rate & Parts Manual:
Buick had advertised the bumper grille as “something that makes so much sense that it’s safe to say that it will start a new trend in styling,” but no such trend materialized and even Buick abandoned the idea for 1951.
Recent
events related to the coronavirus pandemic have put me in mind of the Dodge
Brothers, two of the most talented, and historically under-appreciated, car
manufacturers of America’s early automobile industry.
John Dodge
Horace Dodge
2020 marks
the 100th anniversary of the death of the Dodge Brothers, Horace and
John, from complications related to another pandemic, the Spanish Flu that caused
at least 50 million deaths worldwide. In
January of 1920, the brothers attended an auto show in New York. While there, they both contracted influenza,
and it developed into pneumonia. John died
in his hotel room at only 55 years of age.
Horace, only 52, struggled with health complications until dying in
December with cirrhosis of the liver listed as the official cause.
After the death of his brother, Horace wrote a
letter to dealers in which he said, “The passing of my dear brother, Mr. John
F. Dodge, is to me personally a great loss, so great that I hesitate to look
forward to the years without his companionship, our lives having been, as you
all know, practically inseparable since our childhood.” The brothers were very
close and supportive of each other and, unlike many family members that go into
business together, they stayed that way until the end.
Short articles
sprinkled throughout the early newspapers give additional insight into what type
of people the Dodge Brothers were. One
story from 1916 relates how John Dodge, now a very wealthy and successful
automobile manufacturer, was visiting the Port Huron Engine & Thresher Co.
plant when he recognized a man, Otto Thrun, that he had worked with years previously. Dodge greeted the man and shook his hand,
whereupon the man addressed him as “Mr. Dodge”.
Dodge replied, “You can’t call me Mr. Dodge any more than you did when
we worked side by side.”
1917 Dodge Brothers Closed Car
The brothers were civic-minded and, unlike many of their peers, were active in the community. John served as water commissioner and as a member of Detroit’s Board of Street Railway Commissioners. Horace Dodge served as under-sheriff. At Christmas time, 1917, he was touring the jail with the mayor and sheriff. A man named Dubbs, who was a former patrolman, was being held on manslaughter charges. When Dodge found out that Dubbs was a former employee at the Dodge Brothers plant, he immediately bonded him out so that he could go home for Christmas. A story from the next year, 1918, describes how Dodge personally shook every prisoner’s hand (there were about 200 of them) and wished them each a Merry Christmas. The handshake was particularly welcome as Dodge had a dollar bill concealed in his palm which was pressed into the hand of each man as Dodge left for the next cell.
1918 tourists climbing Sonora Pass in a Dodge Brothers car.
Both John
and Horace were very philanthropic, making large donations to a variety of
causes such as the Salvation Army, The Detroit Federation of Women’s Clubs, the
Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the engineering college at the University of
Michigan and the Protestant Orphan Asylum.
They also donated to many churches.
According to Charles K. Hyde in his book titled The Dodge Brothers: The Men, the Motor Cars and the Legacy, the
brothers also donated to the churches that their employees attended such as the
African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Hamtramck Polish Catholic Church.
Unlike many of their contemporaries, the Dodges very astutely maintained complete ownership of their business so that they never had a board or stockholders to answer to, and they also never borrowed money from banks. They weren’t just smart businessmen however, they were also just plain smart, and the genius of the Dodge Brothers is effectively illustrated by their contribution to the war effort during World War I.
Weapons
using spring recoils were used during the first part of the war but were
constantly out of commission due to broken springs, so the US Government adopted
French heavy artillery including the 155 mm howitzer (the Schneider) and the 155
mm gun (the French Filloux). These
weapons utilized a fine, intricate hydro-pneumatic recoil mechanism that was more
reliable but very difficult to produce.
It was
reported at the time that the Germans had captured many of the French guns but
had been unable to replicate the recoil mechanism. The French factories had only been able to
produce five per day. It was also
reported that two large American manufacturers had tried and failed to produce
the intricate parts. It was suggested that,
if anyone could succeed, it would be the Dodge Brothers.
The War
Department contacted the brothers in the fall of 1917, and John and Horace
accepted the challenge. According to author Charles K. Hyde, John met with
Secretary of War Newton D. Baker and a group of French manufacturers. When they offered to send French machinists
to Detroit to teach the Dodge brothers how to manufacture the mechanisms, John
responded that he and his brother needed only the blueprints (which consisted
of 42 and 71 pages, respectively, for the howitzer and gun mechanisms). Within 24 hours of reaching an agreement, the
Dodges began working on the new plant. It was designed to house 11 acres under
its roof and the first section was ready for use by January. The plant was valued at $10,000,000 and employed
8,000 people.
The Dodge Brothers also designed and built much of the machinery including 62 new machines for drilling and reaming the borings. The industry practice had been to revolve the gun barrel while the cutting tool was held stationary. The Dodges’ design revolved the tools and used six drills at one time. Before long the Dodges were completing 35 recoil mechanisms per day, seven times what the French had been able to produce. Just think how quickly the brothers would be cranking out ventilators, if only they were here today!
In the early days of the automobile industry there was some disagreement concerning what the new contraptions should be called. The Chicago Times-Herald even held a contest to name them and the winner was Moto Cycle! That is a lot easier to say than this early attempt from the Dutch-speaking people of Flanders as reported in a 1911 newspaper:
