1936 : Berline Club vs 4 Door Club Sedan (1601 and 1602)

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.

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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.

Kenneth said it far better than I; agree completely.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!