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Just curious if any of you know anything about a 1919 Model 38 4-passenger Roadster which has been for sale by a dealer called “Fantasy Junction” in the bay area of California? I’ve attached the Hemmings link.
The dealer appears to specialize in more modern European sports cars, so a right-hand drive Pierce seems out of his league. –
I’d LOVE to own the car but it’s beyond my budget unless I can get someone to buy my 1914 Franklin first. (???) I’m just asking because the car has been for sale for a long time. Is anyone familiar with it? Why has it not sold? Does it have problems? I’ve daydreamed about it for months and months.
Maybe I’ll buy a lottery ticket tonight on the way home.
http://www.hemmings.com/classifieds/dealer/pierce_arrow/38/1636318.html
Hi Scott, I have several thoughts on the car which I would express over the phone. Looks like a nice car. Call the past owner Rodney listed in the ad…….he is still very active in the car world. He would be able to give you more back ground information. The 1919 vintage cars are great drivers. As long as it’s a real open car the only question if you should buy it is….. at what price. They are hard to find at best…… good luck. Give me a call if you like. My number is in the roster. Please wait till Sat morning. Ed
Rodney was kind enough to let me drive this car on one of his get
togethers . I drove to an Alpine lake 1000 feet above his valley ranch.
He was sitting next to me but neglected to inform me that the car has
freewheeling. Somehow we made it down the twisty road in one piece. The
2 wheel brakes do work. The color was a gut wrenching lime green at the
time, but the car seemed to be original with a paint job. That was
3 owners ago, but my hair stands straight up recalling that ride.
Thanks Rodney!
I have heard of freewheeling in the ’30s, but had not heard of it on early Pierces. I would appreciate an explanation of how this worked with teen Pierces and when was this feature first deployed on Pierce Arrow and did it end with the model 32?
Free wheeling was on the 1931 cars till the end. I am not sure about anything before 1929 but I don’t think so.
2nd gear is free wheeling on my 1922 Series 33. I’m very careful, Tony, to use 1st & 3rd only on that run down from Blue Lake!
Series 5(1918),51 and 31(1919-20) were optionally available with permanent freewheel. The 4 fwd speed transmission had 2nd/3rd cluster freewheeling, forcing descents in 1st(crawling) or 4th (frightening) on rear brakes only. I have rendered the freewheel inoperable on 2 or 3 transmissions for friends in California by preventing the ratchetting of the cluster with small steel wedges and tack welding them in place for a permanent fix.
transforms the car.
I bet that a lot of us learned something new with this string! Thank you!
Free wheeling aside, that sure is a beautiful 1919 roadster that was first discussed…I noticed it when it first came up for sale and thought then, as now, that it’s a very handsome car. I would hope it’s “real”, and I’d say it’s worth more than 100K and, apparently due to no sale yet, less than asking price. Sure would like it myself, but my ship’s still at sea….
This seems to be something that came later as my Series 3 has the regular
four speed gearbox.One can go down the road quite fast in the fourth gear.
I have been told a Series 3 or Series 4 will outperform the later Series 32-33.Why would you have free wheeling on a second gear?
Yes, that’s a mystery to me as well. Tony mentioned freewheeling second on his Model 32. I drove that car once but I do not recall any suggestion that second gear was “different”. Good Lord, though! . . . Here you are confronted with a steep downhill and normal reaction is to downshift into second and ease the car down. You can’t do that if second is free wheeling. And downshifting from third to first is pretty difficult without coming to a near-full stop.
Does anyone know what Pierce was thinking? What their logic was behind freewheeling second?
I believe that all of the PAMCC guys who knew why they created free-wheeling mid-range gears are now DEAD.
They probably were not as lucky as Tony Costa to make it down into the valley via the ROAD.
They probably took the short cut that Tony avoided.
Perhaps, the cars were made for Flat-Landers.
Perhaps, in the teens, freewheel was offered on cars delivered to the flatland parts of the country, similarly it is known that cars headed to Salt Lake City (moumtains) had louvred hood sides,and extreme low (4.08) rear end ratios offered, plus the regular 3.78 or 3.53.
In the twenties more and more ladies were taking to driving, and gear shifting was probably tedious ,hence drop from 4 to 3 speeds, and I have heard that the thirties cars with freewheel and synchro could be shifted 2nd to 3rd/3rd to 2nd without clutch,making for easy driving.
Alot of the RHD Pierce Arrows were used in areas with mountains.On the Series 31 Four Passenger Roadster I do have in an HCCA Gazette of the 1960’s a picture of the car when in Ray Nelson’s collection.Why has it not sold? Being 1919,the car was caught in the era of being too new for HCCA as it is post 1915 and too old to be a Classic.That has of course now changed with the CCCA now going back to 1915 to be considered for Classic status.This action was taken at the 2015 Annual Meeting.
Yeah, but if you have a 1919 Pierce Arrow, are you really going to want to tour with ’41 Cadillacs and post-war Packards? In other words, what difference does it make if the CCCA allows your car on a tour when it’s going to be the petunia in the onion patch, so to speak. It doesn’t float my boat.
I think CCCA is doing this only to increase their membership which seems to have been in a decline lately. Just like they did when they admitted the obviously production-class 1941 Cadillac., I dropped my membership back when they sent out a survey asking for my net worth. I told them “None of your business” and I wasn’t going to renew my membership if that’s emphasis they held. That, and at the time I had a 1926 Packard which could never tour with the ’41 Cadillacs. Not my kind of people.
Wow, I never received the CCCA “what’s your net worth” questions, they sure would have been disappointed with mine! I’ve pondered the last few years about not re-upping with CCCA, habit keeps me on the list. They’re diluting the original goal of the club, and with a lot of Classics being high dollar, pushing out the “little” guys….
That’s one thing about our Society that I really like, most everyone seems down to earth….and a great bunch of people…
My understanding has always been that the 2nd gear free-wheeling was a flat lander option. My Series 33 was always a Midwest car until it moved to AZ last year. Somewhere I have a paper from Paul Johnson describing how to make it inoperable similar to Richard’s post above. On a side note, but relevant to the discussion of the focus of different clubs, I had my car in the Driver Participation Class in the AACA Western National held in Tucson this past week. It was the oldest of the 150 cars entered! No brass, and only 3 or 4 Nickel era. And Scott, if we’d had any significant hills on that drive, I know I would have told you about the free-wheeling 2nd. One forgets that sort of thing only once!
I have always felt that the high quality automobiles of 1916-1924 needed a club as they were caught so to speak in the middle.There was some very beautiful coachwork at that time.The CCCA decided to go back to 1915 so as to take in the new Cadillac V8 introduced in the fall of 1914 and the new Packard Twin Six in the summer of 1915.Most of the Caravans have been the newer cars for many years.Will this increase membership perhaps a little but one must remember any of these big early cars is going to be expensive.Prewar quality car prices are just very high these days and that is going to have an effect on club membership.The number of surviving quality cars of this early era is really quite small.Other clubs have had tours where a 1910 car might be on the same tour say with a 1937 car and a great time was had by all.