More B.

["Mahoney, John" <JMahoney@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I intended to talk Teague today, but will begin with Brewster and end with Ford, instead.  Fitting in two ways, and as Brewster ended by fitting Fords.

Brewster & Co. might've been the first among the last of the fine car builders that once thrived in America.  Elder William arrived in MA (not on a Mopar) in 1620, founder James built carriages in CT (not in NY) in 1810, sons Henry and James B. (not in WA), working, respectively, in Bridgeport and in Gotham City, showed the top-hat Parisians how coach building was done.  Medaille d'Or in 1878.  Oscar (TM) Award in coach building.

Henry's son William started building car bodies in 1905 (he ceased building horse-car bodies in 1911), and built for Delaunay-Belleville and Rolls-Royce until the Great War.  After "The War To End All Wars" (oh, sad people) was over, Brewster trained a ton of talented American people, whatever their "hyphenated" origins were.  Dietrich, Hibbard, Crecelius, Gregorie and more.  They made America --- and took pride in being Americans.  They all spoke English.  

Brewster built the best for the richest.  Brewster ground and mixed its own paint (and kept matches in stock) for family colors were routine: J. P. Morgan - dark green, J. J. Astor, dark maroon.  Bamboo canework was a Brewster speciality.  French-style layered paint that took weeks to do after weeks of hand-varnished paint had dried.  No glued-on fabric-backed cane for Brewster --- leave that to "lesser" shops like, well, gasp, maybe, um, LeBaron?
Their type of cane chipped off; Brewster's cane aged to perfection.  It looked better and more realistic as it was washed and polished and loved.

Brewster picked-up, delivered, and stored bodies by the season; two full floors, dusted daily.  Brewster built custom-fitted seats for chauffeurs, built their own Brewster cars (with their own Knight engines) from 1915-1925, and, in 1919, Brewster began building the American ["Springfield"] Rolls-Royce.  Back then, R-R had reason to call itself the world's best.  Brewster built the best of the best.

Holbrook, Merrimac and Willoughby built bodies for "Rolls-Royce Custom Coach Work" cars and just about 80 years ago (in October of 1925), R-R took control of Brewster & Co. entirely.  The best bought the best; the world was -very- different then.

R-R America stopped building "Brewster" cars in 1931 (that little thing called the Depression), but Brewster still built bodies on other "best cars" in America until 1934, when it went bankrupt.  After reorganization, Brewster bodied a few more Lincolns, Cadillacs, Buicks, and Fords, but Brewster went belly-up for good (or rather bad) in 1938, and the best of the best was gone.  Isn't that the way with everything?

If Brewster wasn't the most stylish of builders (although sometimes it was stunning: Brewster's re-body of Constance Bennett's 1930 R-R town car was the most stunning sight at the 1935 Oscar TM ceremony), it may have been --- along with Amesbury [B&S*, Bryand, Hollander & Morrill, Judkins, Merrimac, Walker and Witham], Derham, Rollston (later Rollson), and Willoughby --- the most stylish conservative.  Yes, that's possible;  Compassionate?  That's another arena.

*Hudson's best builder --- and the only Hudsons that are Full Classics.

Buehrig once estimated that half the Duesenberg bodies built were to his designs; the other half were designed by coach builders.  Two or three times that many designs stayed sketches in his notebooks or drafts on his table, but he had learned well at Gotfredson, LeBaron, Briggs, and Packard.  He polished his skills to perfection at A&C under H. E.  He showed his stuff under E. C.  He was the original "shoestring" Teague.

Did you know tha the famous hood ornament was designed to be cheap.  No tooling, no casting, just cheap (back then) flat brass and hand work.  Saw, braze, mill, plate, polish, and voila!  The "Duesenbird"  (Sorry I don't have time to illustrate today, time's fleeting now.)

Did you know that Buehrig argued with Earl?  (And lived!!)

Did you know that he first clayed his "coffin-nose" at GM?

Did you know that he "stepped-down" a dozen years before Hudson did?

Did you know that he owned a Pacer?  (Checking to see if you're asleep.)

Did you know that he brought a dead body back to life two decades before "Rambler American" Romney would?

And did you know that Buehrig lost a GM design-staff contest (a trip to the 1933 World's Fair) to the very man who would [repeatedly] hire Teague?

Maybe more on that later.  Time's gone.

Oh, and Ford.  On this date, the first Tin Lizzie left the Detroit line.

The automobile was finally affordable by Americans like you and like me.

As a wise man once wrote, it "gave practical reality to the rhetoric of American democracy."


And it let you and me own AMCs.