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Springtime???
14 days ago I read about Curtis J. Pool taking out his big V-12 at a sunny 50+ degree day for a spin. It really inspired me. Here in Norway we did have a long cold winter. I still have a foot of snow in my garten and in front of my garage there is 3-4 inch of steel ice. Normally we should now have had the beginning of the springtime.
On april 1, there was exactly 100 years since we got our first Automobile Law. Our local club should participate in the celebration. In the morning there was about 20+ degree and it was extremely hard to krank up my Pierce (I do not have heat in my garage). Someone told my that it was due to old «summer» gasoline. Do you have the same in US? Do anybody have any experience with that?
As you can see from the photo the road was clean from snow – due to heavy use of salt during the winter.
Oivind,
I’m glad my story inspired you, that is why I wrote it.
It took a while for my big V-12 to crank over as well but that is due to the fact that I do not have an electric fuel pump on my car and it takes time for that old gas to get up to the carbs to crank over.
Here in Michigan it is now raining and around 50 degrees, it is supposed to rain on and off all week. That is good, since it will wash all that nasty salt off the roads and I’ll be clear to hit the open road again.
Good to see that you got your car out on the road, I hope you guys get out from under that deep freeze soon.
Happy Motoring Oivind!
I ran my 36 V-12 at 7am today, cranked over about 5 times and fired off for the first time since mid November. I have now owned the car 20 years, time sure does fly. Ed
Hey Ed,
I’ve owned my ’33 839 sedan for 42 years – just short of 2/3 of my life!
Bob
This coming November, I will have owned my 1935 845 Seven Passenger Sedan for sixty three (63) years. The car was purchased from the estate of the original owner at Eugene, Oregon in November 1950. I was a senior in high school.
My dad’s old car (1931 Series 42) that he bought in 71 has been in the garage of every home I have lived in since I was 6 years old (41 years). It was a gift to me when I finished college. It will be at a PAS meet some day, it’s only about 1/3 done. There is nothing like a family history with a car. Paul, just think only a few more payments and the car will be paid off! Ed
Shucks, I can’t match the time owned except with my 1931 Chevrolet, next year will be 50 years.
My ’31 Pierce phaeton, well, I first met it 47 years ago, but only bought it 29 years ago….
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana…..
It must be really nice to own an old family car, once bought by your father or grandfather. My father had in the thirties a great Mercedes-Benz (320?). I tried to track the car but I did never found it. My assumption is that the germans took it when they occupied Norway in 1940 as they did with many cars.
My Pierce was discovered in the beginning of the sixties on a shore in one of the fjords (photo). The discoverer did not take it becourse it was to bad as a project. Fortunately he shot some photos and showed them to a friend of mine. After some years he picked up the Pierce project and sold it to me in 1980. I have now had this car for 33 years. Of course it did take «a couple» of year before I could drive it…
If found today it would go to Pebble Beach in the preservation class….. just needed a little “clean up”. Oivind, while I have the Pierce Arrow disease severely, I would have never had the courage to attempt to do your car. It’s not restoration, but resurrection. Ed
I have had the pleasure of owning my ’27 Series 80 Sedan for about 3 weeks now. Much better starting condition than yours Oivind! My plan is to have it for 30+ more years and then to my son. James
I was searching the internet one evening back in 02 when I came upon a webpage called http://www.rollingart.com and found my 32 limo for sale.
My wife just happened to walk into the room and I said “Hey check this Pierce out.” She looked at the photo and said “You should buy that car!”
So after an exhausting 8 hour drive overnight from Detroit to Philadelphia, we arrived to find this big limo stored in a warehouse, half covered with a ratty old tarp, dirty and dusty, and with a dead battery to boot.
Thinking “What did I just get myself into?” and that I just drove all this way for nothing, we managed to charge the battery and the limo coughed to life.
Once I started driving it I knew I was going to bring it home. It drove quite smooth for a Tank. Even though when I braked it threw us into the next lane, I knew I could not say no at that point.
Interesting to note that I was unaware on the test drive that we were only running on one bank of cylinders. Once I got it home my friend Ed popped the distributor cap, adjusted a few things and both banks roared to life.
(*Sniff*) :`) And that is how the ’32 came into our lives!
(Isn’t that a great story!)
This reply is self explanatory. I have owned this car for 45 years, this month. If you have read “Memories” before, please disregard. Tony
Memories by Tony Zappone
It was in the spring of 1968. I was 26 years old, a young manager in a new car dealership, and a budding old car nut. I had already owned a 1929 Franklin, (rough), a1940 LaSalle series 52 four door, (rougher) and a 1937 Packard 115C coupe. (roughest).
I also had a 1936 Pierce Arrow convertible coupe that was a pretty decent old car.
For the third or fourth time in my short life I was in the process of trying to quit smoking. The twelve-hour workdays, the subsequent closing of the bars most nights, were wearing on me. I thought that if I quit smoking, the burden on my physical being might be relieved somewhat. In the process of weaning myself from tobacco, I found that I was waking very early in the morning. On this particular Thursday I found myself in a diner in Holley, New York at 5:30 in the morning, drinking coffee and dreaming of a Camel. Cigarette. Our local butcher saw me sitting there, and asked me about the Pierce-Arrow. We chatted about this car for a while, and our conversation attracted the attention of a stranger who was sitting a couple of stools away. He piped in, “I know of a car just like that, only it’s a four door.” Sure. Here’s another quest that ends up being a model A doodlebug with a barn roof caved in on it. He further related, “It is a maroon car with a white top. The old man that owns it had a heart attack and he can’t drive it anymore.” I knew of such a car. I had seen it at an AACA national meet on Grand Island, Niagara Falls, the previous summer. I asked him who this old man was, and he told me that he owned the largest rendering plant in Western New York, and that it was located in downtown Buffalo. There being no immediate pressing duties at 5:45 in the morning, off I went to Buffalo. (driving a 1968 Oldsmobile 442 coupe, black with white stripes, four speed, no power steering) At this point someone might ask me what I had for breakfast this morning, and I wouldn’t remember. Ah! but for the love of cars!
I arrived at Schrowe Rendering Company at about 7:00 a.m. A tall, older gentleman arrived subsequently, as I recall, driving a newer Cadillac. I told him that I too had a Pierce-Arrow, and that I had heard that he wanted to sell his. He said, no, he did not want to sell the car. He enjoyed driving the car; a friend was going to install power steering such that he could continue driving this big car. (three tons on the hoof, 144 inch wheelbase) I asked him if I could at least look at the car. He said sure, there was no harm in that, and we motored off to East Aurora, a very nice Buffalo suburb. As we approached a big yellow house on a hill the excitement was unbearable. The quest for an old car can only be compared to the quest for a member of the opposite sex, although this narrative is not the forum for the comparison of those sorts of quests.
He opened the door and here was this huge maroon car. A 1936 Pierce-Arrow model 1601 convertible sedan with partition. As wealthy as this gentleman was, he was frugal in his restoration procedures. The car had a white nylon top, (easier to clean he said), an enamel paint job (his old painter was too old these days to rub out lacquer) and an interior with leather seat cushions, but whipcord backrests. (his back perspired too much with leather backrests) Okay, I had never thought of that. Truly, here was a gentleman with a mind of his own. He let me drive the car. It ran beautifully, and drove like a modern car. I began to weasel around the subject of passing the car on to someone younger: all the stories that we use, to try to get something from someone that that someone does not want to give up, whatever that something might be. He further advised me that both his sons-in –law were old car people, and both of them had expressed interest in the car. He expected that one of them would have to end up with it. However, they were both on vacation in Florida, and would not return for a week or two. The old car acquisition fangs emerged from my jaw, and I went for the throat. After offering undying admiration, and a promise of keeping the car forever, and other long forgotten words of Pierce-Arrow devotion, he said, “Where would you get $5000.00 anyway if I decided to sell you the car?” This was a very good point. I may have had $400.00. I also owed my future partner $12,000.00 the following month for my first payment on the buy in on our dealership.
Then came the road to the close, a we use to say in the trade. I said I don’t have $5000.00, but I have $4000.00, and I will give you a check now. I meant business. He reluctantly agreed. I am sure he had paid $500 or $600 for the car, and he had a real Mallard, as we called a mark in the auto trade, and he was going for my throat, only for a good profit and not a great classic car. I quickly wrote him a check for $4000.00, removed the plates from my demonstrator, put them on the Pierce-Arrow, and drove to Brockport, where our business and our banker were located. I pulled up in front of the old Marine Midland Bank. I showed my young buddy Bill what I bought, and told him I needed $4000 to cover the check. In those days there were no loan committees, officer approvals, whatever. He gave me the money, and I paid $100 a month on that note for what seemed like forever.
What about the $12,000.00 for my partner? Surely he would understand and give me a couple of more months. He did not understand. I called Roaring Twenty Auto sales, sold him my other Pierce-Arrow, the two other old cars, and borrowed the rest of the money from a cousin. Well, the Pierce-Arrow that went to Roaring Twenties is in the Staley collection in Norwich, and the other Pierce-Arrow is still in our garage. I kept my promise to Mr. Schrowe, and regard the car as an integral part of my old car devotion. We are old car people; these are the silly things we do.
Tony Zappone
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Great story Tony,
Thanks for sharing.
Greg Long.
Your story would make a great movie plot! “Old car devotion” is
a terminal disease that easily outlasts the average marriage(please
forgive me if this observation causes a bout of post-traumatic-
syndrome).You know that “old car devotion has gone too far when
you get up in the morning,look in the mirror and see a reflection
of Toad(of Toad hall in “Wind in the Willows)with his crazed eyes,
who gave his all(his mind)in the pursuit of early automobiles!
Motor on!