Well, what can I say? I’ve always loved the classic prewar Amercian luxury cars: Duesenberg, Cord, Cadillac, Packard, Pierce-Arrow. Somewhat lesser known–but just as amazing a car as its 1930’s brethren–is the Marmon V16. Under the hood of this beauty is a 491-cid, 200hp V16 engine. Only Cadillac and Marmon ever produced an automobile with a V16. Less than 400 were built between 1931 and 1933.
JP Cavanaugh was fortunate to find one in the metal (CC here) but I have not yet had the pleasure. But I can live vicariously through this most excellent 1931 Sixteen shot by johnh875. I really like the colors–so different yet so sharp! It appears that not only the interior but also the front suspension components are color-keyed. This example is owned by author Clive Cussler and is on display at–you guessed it–the Cussler Museum.
OK, I think I now understand the CC effect, Just yesterday my father and I got to talking about Packards , because of the Packard Hawk of yesterday. He then started talking about Marmons a brand I had never heard before. We spent a good hour on line looking at and talking about these cars. I now know what a Marmon is
How could I go my whole life knowing about Dusenbergs, Packards, Stutz and Pierce-Arrows and not have heard about this beautiful car?
Don’t forget Peerless, Franklin, Stearns-Knight, Dorris, etc., not to mention the outstanding foreign brands. For me the most exceptional well made cars are found in these brands we are talking about as they are the highest we ever reached, instead of the large car houses of the day; which no doubt had their purpose of making cars affordable to the masses.
I do know what those are as well, but I just never knew about the Marmon. I had books and books about great cars, movie star cars, famous cars for whatever reason, never read anything about the Marmon
Having overlooked Marmon you will enjoy discovering a great marque for the first time. Most people only know of Marmon because it won the first Indianapolis 500.
My darling wife, whose colours tend toward peach and apricot, has just said that she would look very good in that Marmon. I can’t disagree.
I’ve read about Marmon, but only as a truckmaker. The Rolls Royce among truckmakers, that’s how they described them. Now I see this V16 they’d better say the Marmon among truckmakers. No idea if there’s any relation between the cars and the trucks. (Photo: Douglas Wilkinson)
I had forgotten that Clive Cussler had a car museum, I think the main specialty is large formal limos and luxury cars from the 20’s and 30’s, though there are lots of other cars in the collection.
Yes, plus a few boat-tail roadsters from the same era, a row of big circa 1960 convertibles, plus all the cars featured in the books.
It is only open a couple of days a week, but definitely worth the half hour drive out of central Denver. The volunteers at the museum were excellent and made our visit a highlight of the trip.
A few years back there was a guy who built a ’32 Ford roadster with a tweaked, fuel-injected Marmon V16 engine under its stretched nose.
That is grounds for getting your “Car Lovers Card” taken away.
What else would you do with a ‘spare’ Marmon engine?
@John H.-
+1
The car it came out of was probably melted down for scrap before most of us were even born, so no point in crying about it now.
Better to see such a rare and exquisite piece of machinery be put to good use rather than rot away in the back of someone’s barn.
Maybe put it in a Marmon limousine like the engine-less one that sold on Ebay this past year??
Instead the guy chose to put a saddle on a sow with what he did.
DA’s can do whatever they want with their cars that aren’t rare but a Marmon?..come on. Some of us see such cars as being as precious as an old house or any oil on canvas. Others see them as pay things for their self absorbed little minds to turn them into junk.
Beautiful cars, engineering perfection just in time for lack of money to purchase except for a fortunate few, as above is there any relation to the truck maker?
I think the car company became a truck and bus company, along with other things it manufactured, like trailers and railway tank cars, the truck company went out of business or was sold off to International, I think part of it still exists, the part that makes railway cars, not sure.
Trivia: This is not the same firm that produced the Marman Clamp, a device still popular among rocket engineers for securing stages together. This company was founded by none other than Zeppo Marx!
Another entertainer nerd was Heddy Lamarr, the Hollywood starlet who shared a patent for Frequency Hopping & also notoriety for her role in the Austrian blue movie “Ecstasy.” So good looks & brains can coexist; I knew a cheerleader in high school who got a Ph.D in EE and, last I checked, is on faculty at a Midwest college.
Hedy Lamarr; brains and talent. And absolutely beautiful. Like this Marmon. Thanks Tom (and Neil).
Hedley…..Hedley…..
Love it!
Hedley Lamarr: My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.
Taggart: God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue prettier than a twenty dollar whore.
Wheres Froggie?
Carmine; Did you get my e-mail? Something important…if not. contact me asap. Thanks.
Hedy Lamar’s patent for Frequency Hopping is today known as “Spread Spectrum” among us radio geeks.
Stutz also made a V16. This is an opportunity to point out the V12’s and V16’s did not necessarily mean the most displacement. Some of the early 6 cylinder engines had massive displacement.
It was originally built for Wilfred T. Pepto IV, the Pepto-Bismol magnate.
HAHA
Actually, the thought that came into my head immediately was “I have never before seen a car the exact color of calamine lotion.” But there it is. Pepto is brighter and pinker.
Aw, come on MadHungarian, you’re ruining the joke 🙂
It is an interesting color. Not quite pink, not quite peach. I guess I would call it salmon. I wonder how different it looks in person.
Priced under $5000! I will take two, thank you!
In the depths of the First Great Depression. that monster must have made quite an impression.
As much as I like these cars(and I like them a lot!) I do not think I would have been comfortable being seen in one during the time when most people were so desperate just to survive.
I always really wondered how “bad” the Great Depression really was, I mean I know that it was bad, but for example, in 1929 Buick sold 196,000 cars, 181,000 for 1930, 138,000 for 1931 and then 56,000 for 1932, ok, that’s big drop, don’t get me wrong, but they still sold 56,000 pretty expensive upper middle class new cars right in the heart of the depression, and they were back to 168,000 Buicks by 1936, they way some people tell the tale you would swear the entire US population was in soup lines.
Plymouth actually sold more cars in 1932 than in 1931.
From this distance when I read about the depression, its mostly about the dustbowl. I figure the geographical spread was more concentrated in some areas than others. You still had the speakeasy thing happening in some major cap cities, so discretionary spend still existed.
Still, my dad grew up in post-war Italy, and some of his stories still colour his actions today.
It was severe, worldwide, and created conditions in Germany that contributed to the rise of Hitler and WWII (that ended unemployment and prompted Keynesian levels of public spending and debt that ended the Depression). Unemployment was in double digits in many countries for years. Nevertheless, many were untouched. Joseph P. Kennedy sold all of his stock before the crash and with enormous cash reserves at hand, made money hand over fist in the 30’s. There was great disparity in levels of income and wealth in the US; some were in soup lines, others bought cars. Then, of course, there was Will Rogers’s perspective on our love of the automobile: “America is the only country where people drive to the poor house in their car.”
History has not judged JP Kennedy well.
I have often read Joseph Kennedy shorted a lot of stock before the Depression hit.
However bad you can imagine it, it was worse than that. Remember this is the mile marker where so many car companies stopped forever. And it was a global economy back then as well.
I’m guessing it lies somewhere in between, again, its not like it was the dark ages or something, when you can still sell 56,000 Buicks, everything can’t be all that bad. True lots of companies faltered during that era, but think of the ones that are still around today that were around then too.
Carmine: Quite true; it wasn’t the dark ages. Those that kept their jobs, or whose business survived, made out ok, although many had their wages lowered.
Wealthy folks were affected very asymmetrically: some that were heavily invested in stock, especially on margin, were wiped out. Same for those that owned companies that went under, their wealth took big hits. But many companies survived quite well, because it was much easier to lay off folks or reduce wages. GM made a profit in every year of the Depression! (IIRC)
There were fewer social safety nets, so those that lost jobs were really in bad shape, unless they had family or other supports. But folks for the most part got through it, by being thrifty and resourceful.
The very top end of the auto market was obviously devastated, but it had largely been inflated because of the go-go 20s, and was due for a major correction.Also, increasing wages would have made cars like the Marmon 16 and such even more expensive over time. So many factors were involved. No simple answers, as usual. And it’s hard to do the Depression justice in a comment or two.
The entertainment industry did pretty well during that time too.
I do recall reading that 1/3 of adult males were out of work at the worst. There was a lot of noise about how bad things were in 2008, but the unemployment rate was not nearly as bad and, as PN mentioned, there is much more of a social safety net today compared with 1932.
Also, only the largest companies survived. Nash, Studebaker and Hudson were giants compared to companies like Auburn, Moon or Stutz. So many of those little companies that could make a decent living on volume of 20k units annually could not survive on sales of 3K units.
Carmine, you’re right about Hollywood during this period. When the GFC hit, my girlfriend at the time was a relatively high end hairdresser. Not all of her clients were wealthy, but her custom was hardly hit. In tough times, people still sought succour. Preston Sturges’ ‘Sullivan’s Travels’ tells that sort of story well.
In the period up to 1941, the U.S. aeronautical industry produced an amazing variety of state-of-the-art metal airliners, some which sold well internationally. Europe had nothing close, except maybe the Fw200, which got militarized before its commercial variant could sell widely. The closest alternatives I could find were the Armstrong Whitworth Ensign & the SNCASE Languedoc, neither of which had much relative market success.
Examples:
Boeing 247 (even bought by Lufthansa), 307 (1st production pressurized airliner), 314 flying boat
Sikorsky flying boats
Douglas DC-2, -3, & -4 (the pressurized -4E was so advanced, they had to dumb it down to reduce operating costs)
Lockheed Electras (10, 12, 14, 18), 049 Constellation (had to wait for postwar commerical market). Chamberlain flew to Munich in a model 14.
Beech 18
The DC-2 was so good, a stock KLM one came in 2nd in an international air race, after a custom deHavilland racer.
Marmon Motor Car begat Marmon-Herrington which made 4 wheel drive transfer cases and axles for Ford. After WWII the Marmon Group was formed and got into railroads. Warren Buffet owns a controlling interest.
Thanks for posting this one. I can still spend lots of time staring at the styling details on this car. Those flat fronts of the fenders are unlike anything else, before or since.