As a novice Pierce Arrow aficionado , I’m wondering what’s the difference between these two models . Can someone please elaborate ?
Maybe it best to explain body styles this way.
5 & 7 passenger sedan, as well as limo are all the same she’ll, looking from the side you see a six window car not counting vent windows. Thus each door has a roll down window, then next to the rear seat another window is present. A much longer body or “green house”. On Pierce cars the doors can vary in with, to adjust for chassis length. Sometimes a car is converted to a formal sedan, where the rear most window is covered over, but you still have the full size and “less attractive” green house.
Club sedan has a shorter main body, windows only on the doors, and very often has a built in trunk or larger trunk area, depending upon Year of the car. They look better, bring more money, and are much harder to find.
Club Brougham is a two door car with a blind rear quarter. Basically a car similar to modern two door cars that have one large door and a rear seat.
Then there are another assorted names and configurations, but they all fit into the above catagory. A town car can be a six window car, or close coupled like a club sedan.
See photos below. It should help.
My 1936 V-12 club sedan. Notice short wheelbase, thus small doors, two side windows, blind quarter, big trunk
Photo didn’t load.
Most of us have been collecting pre war car for so long we forget that it can be confusing to new members. Also, different car companies called the same body styles different names. Example, a Pierce Arrow two door car with a rear seat is a club brougham, Cadillac called it a Town Coupe, some call it a Victoria, and Studebaker called it a Saint Regis. All the same body style and number of seats.
Thus to long time collectors 5 & 7 passenger cars as well as limos are just called sedans. They are the most common body type, and the least expensive and deseriable configurations. Personally I like closed cars in general, and have no issues with a limo, and have owned several. Only drawback to a seven passenger or limo,is most often the seat is not adjustable and tall or large people can’t fit behind the whee.
Also note that when new the Sedan and Limousine cars were the most expensive, however current collectors pay a premium for Runabout and Touring cars.
As they now say, when the top goes down, the price goes up!
On tour in marginal weather, the people in the Sedans are comfortable and dry, while those in Runabout and Touring cars are wearing winter jackets and / or rain gear.
To answer the original question, a BERLINE is usually a club sedan as described above but with a division glass, implying that a chauffeur is the driver,
Thanks guys for all the answers!I am a big fan of club sedans (previously owned a “37 Packard Super 8 Club Sedan) and that’s why I posted a want ad for a ’36 Pierce Arrow Club Sedan. Edgar, your “36 V-12 is beautiful!
My understanding of a berline is it is a car with a retractable divider window which can be used as a formal limousine. The driver’s compartment and the passenger compartment are upholstered in the same material, so that the owner can drive the car with the divider window down as a large sedan. With the divider window up, it’s driven as a limousine.
Kenneth said it far better than I; agree completely.
I don’t agree with the Berline definition. Factory literature refers to upholstery and devider window options only as Enclosed Drive Limousine, and as far as I have ever seen, a Berline is a “club sedan” with a devider. Exclusively chauffeur driven cars have a leather headliner in the front, cars occasionally owner driven in Limo configuration had the lighter matching headliner material running from front to rear, per factory literature published by Pierce Arrow. See 1930 & 1931 custom catalogs, along with the non factory bodied literature given out at auto shows. Ed
It’s a pity that Gerald Schimke of WA is no longer a member; he would bite into this tempest in a teapot with relish (if I may use multiple metaphors). His 1932 Model 52 CLUB BERLINE won the Vanderveer (now Weis) Award in 1991.
The various body styles are what the manufacturers call them, with little or no commonality. For example, the 1939 Cadillac 75 (V8) and 90 (V-16) club sedans are called Town Sedans (with no division) and have the identifying suffix of 39 (e.g., 7539, 9039). Add a division glass to the same car and it becomes a Formal Sedan (7559 and 9059). The current owner of my 1939 75 also has a project 7559 (with leather roof, division glass, small rear window) that I hauled back from Beatty NV along with so many Cad parts that I rivaled one of Ed’s overloaded hauling exercises.
That car is a 48K mile car originally delivered to the Archdiocese of Baltimore. And Cadillac offered two different divisions–“formal” and “imperial,” essentially framed and unframed. That car has a cloth front seat but in conventional broadcloth as opposed to the embossed cloth in the rear compartment.
The term “berline” was PRINCIPALLY used by custom body companies. I know Cadillac did not use it, and I don’t think Packard did.
The 1929 Dyke’s quotes SAE standards that defines a Berline as a sedan with a partition at the rear of the driver’s seat. The 1930 SAE standards omitted the Berline and defined the sedan with a partition as an “Imperial” sedan.
Pierce literature did describe Schmike’s car as a “Club Berline”, and in their 1937 literature described my 1703 EDL as an “Imperial Salon Twelve”.
Hope this helps.
In the early days of auto manufacturing, closed cars were few and far
between. They were expensive, heavy including top heavy, and mostly
suited for slow, in city speeds. They were generally built by coach
builders that had experience from building horse carriages. Their
bodies were updated horse buggies and the names of the carriage styles
were adapted by the autos that resembled them. ” In 1921, Motor ran
an article on auto body types in order to straighten out the confusion
that still existed in terminology. As an example, the recently
developed sedan with a movable window behind the driver was called by
Brewster “double-enclosed drive”, by Lancia a “sporting limousine,”
by Cole a ” Tourisine,” by King a “limoudan,” by Packard a “Salon
Brougham,” and a “suburban” by the stock-car field”. Don’t get your
undies in a bind if you don’t have your auto body types thoroughly
defined, because they never were.
Tony, I like this post. I’m not sure if I enjoy the term Tourisine or Limoudan better….
My understanding, over the years, is that Berline meant division window, no jump seats, regardless of the body configuration. Could be wrong based on what I read above, or not.
No jump seats because there wasn’t room due to the close-coupled design, I suppose.
Depends on the wheelbase used, and the desire of the (wealthy) customer. I agree that “berlines” I have known as such have not had jump seats. However, the Cadillac Formal Sedan (7559) I mentioned does indeed have two rear-facing jump seats, but that close-coupled body is on the same 141.3-inch wheelbase as their “EDL” (in Pierce parlance). It would have been a bit chummy in the rear compartment, but perhaps less so because the jump seats were rear-facing.
To add a bit to the discussion of jump seats, any jump seat facing sideways was for the “staff”” aka the help. So I was told by an elderly gentleman in the late 70’s who’s family purchased the 37 Packard twelve formal sedan(close coupled) with no devider. His father has his secretary take shorthand on the drive into work.”
It’s interesting to note that how different manufacturers have applied names to various models that may or may not have anything to do with their original meaning. Over the years, many manufacturers have used the title “Brougham” to describe their models, and a brougham was originally an enclosed light two passenger carriage. How that transmogrified into the big Cadillacs of the 1960s and 1970s is anyone’s guess. By the same token, Lincoln called, and still calls, their largest cars the “Town Car,” which originally would have an open drivers compartment which became a four door closed sedan, maybe with a sun roof, and now is a SUV model. Pullman is also used to describe long luxurious limousines, but the only car bodies I know of that were actually built by the Pullman company were open touring cars on the Packard chassis during the 1920s. I’d be curious to know if Pullman ever bodied any Pierces during that time. Anyway, interesting to note how advertising works!