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Wheel caps: One hundred years after this 1915 Pierce-Arrow (next photo) was produced we found the wheel caps once belonging to the car. The strange is that three of these caps have an inside diameter of 3 ½ inch and are 2 inch tall. The forth one is 3 11/16 inside and is 2 3/16 tall and must of course have come from another Pierce. Could anyone of you identify the last one?
This Pierce-Arrow from 1915 had the chassis no. 36048 and should be a model 38-3-C. The car was disassembled before the WW2 and converted into a farmers “potato-picker” (I do not know the correct word). Some of the parts are saved, a new frame is bought from Australia and some parts are picked up in USA and at Hershey. The plan is to restore the car!
the car…
What a great car to find and restore.
Make sure to post plenty of pictures along the way.
Richard has set the bar pretty high for restoration updates. 
The hubcap on the right looks to be off a model 66. The front hubs on the 66 were larger and the caps wouldn’t interchange with the rear ones like on the other models. Sounds like it will be quite a project.
This 38 C-3 is now in Denmark and is being restored.The frame was found in Colorado.This was a few years ago so the restoration my be close to completion.What is the plan with the hubcaps?
William!
Have you been in contact with him? We have tried but he does not answer. Frame from Colorado? I was told Australia. Doesn’t matter but some part came from A. I myself picked up a front Axel at Hershey.
You have the same model, let us see a photo of it please!
Oivind,
I have not talked with Joergen in a few years.They were working on another car as well and perhaps that one involved a frame from Australia.The Colorado frame was in Grand Junction and Joergen and his dad came here to buy it,crate it and ship it home.There is a photo of my very original C-3 on this message board and it was posted late Fall of 2014 in a discussion about
pre-1921 Pierce Arrows.I could be interested in those hubcaps.Do you want to sell them? My scanner is down right now.
William,
I will make another attempt to get in touch with him. If not you can buy them. Here is another photo of the car.
Oivind,
Here is the photo of my 1915 C-3 Five Passenger Touring Car you wanted to see.
What a difference the placement of those headlamps makes. I bet
they light up the road differently, too. Thanks for making the
picture of your fine car available, William.
The story behind the Norwegian C-3 is most interesting as it’s serial number
turns up in the listing of a group of car then went to Russia in latter 1915.
There is a possibility it is the Kerensky car and I have seen a photo of him standing in the tonneau of a C-3 at the front but the lamps are not visible.
Things were touchy there at that time and the car with bracket headlamps would blend in more with other vehicles plus the lamps would be less vulnerable to damage.Those unusual bracket lamps could be Russian made.My car was sold new in California to a very prominent Pasadena resident who also had a residence in St.Paul,Minn.and would winter in Pasadena.I have his 1919 California registration for the car and have been touch with the family.These headlamps have very deep reflectors and I suspect with the location put the light out on the road.The mileage on my car is estimated to be only about 35000 at the most as the car was put away around 1922 and was stored until about 1950.The history is most interesting.As for Kerensky,he had to leave Russia in a hurry and he did so in his Pierce Arrow and I believe making it to France via Finland.This Norwegian C-3 went from France to Norway as I understand.The whole story is fascinating.
If you go to Wikipedia and type in Alexander Kerensky you can see a photo of him in the Pierce Arrow talking to his exhausted troops much in the fashion of Napoleon a bit over 100 years prior.It is too bad the front is not visible so as to see the headlamps.The Norwegian car appears to have been painted so as to blend in and less likely to be a target.
The photos I have are not of the best quality. Here I have made cut and adjusted the contrast of another photo. You now better can see the style of the lamps. I mean I have heard that the lamps were french made. I will try to check it out.
Oivind,
Were the hubcaps found where this C-3 used to be? I wonder if the headlamps might be sitting on a shelf.The style of the headlamps clearly places them to the date of the car.Imperial Russia and France had ties
and so it is possible there were fitted when the car was new or nearly new.It appears all bright work has been painted so the car does not stand out and blends in with the scenery.Some French lamp makers of that time were Phares Besnard,Bleriot and Phares Ducellier.The front bumper is missing so I wonder if the car was hit.The tires look unusual and wonder if they are a version of Prowodnik.Russian Prowodnik tires were sold in the
US in 1913-1914-1915.I do not think the firm survived the war and political change.I hope you can find the headlamps.
The lamps look like French Bleriots of the era. I recently passed on one exactly the same to a guy in Stanten Island for his 1914 Darracq.
Unless the car is sitting on a slope, or the picture is off, it looks as if the left side lamp is lower. Pierce wouldn’t let a car out of the factory that way. It does make sense if the car was driven on the right side of the road, though.
The front bumper is missing also but one must remember Russian roads in those days.The Pierce Arrow could have sustained some damage during combat.