Here’s two stainless steel wonders from the past: a 1936 Ford built and owned by the Allegheny Ludlum Steel Corp., as a traveling showcase of the company’s stainless steel products. And of course the other is the DeLorean, this being the 1981 prototype, and of course being the first mass-production car with a stainless steel skin.
Now we just need the long-awaited Tesla Cybertruck to photobomb this shot.
Would the Audi A2 and A8 not count, along with recent Ford F-150s? Or do they combine stainless with conventional steel panels?
It seems DeLorean was the last to use unpainted panels though.
Just reread it and realized those and the Cybertruck are both unpainted SS and the Audis and Ford aren’t. I haven’t kept up with Tesla speculation enough to know if the Cybertruck will only be offered in bare SS; I think that may be a detriment if Tesla has any mass-market intentions for the CyberTruck. Obviously the early adopters will have a unique-looking truck, but Tesla keeps their models around a long time with little change, and unusual-looking vehicles like the AMC Pacer have a long history of doing well when first introduced but trailing off rapidly once the look is no longer novel.
There were the 1960 Thunderbirds and some later Continentals as well.
https://www.autoweek.com/a2012686/1960-ford-thunderbird-goes-stainless/
Allegheny Ludlow made three stainless bodied-Fords: The 1936 pictured above, a 1960 Thunderbird, and a 1966 Lincoln Convertible (that is trimmed as a 1967 model).
After changing hands multiple times over the years, all three are now in the possession of the Crawford Auto and Aviation Museum in Cleveland. I’ve seen all three many times.
https://www.wrhs.org/crawford-collection-news/
I saw them about 15 years ago in a little garage at the steel plant in PA. Nice to see they are in a museum now.
I’ve long wondered if the Eldorado Brougham had a regular steel roof under the stainless one.
I spent years replacing most of my house’s 1922 siding nails so the rust wouldn’t show through the paint. I started using stainless nails, but they were too soft to penetrate the hardened wooden studs reliably. At least a third got bent, even when using the old nail holes (they were longer). What are they going to use to reinforce the Tesla’s body panels?
@ Ralph L,
I can answer the question about the Eldo Brougham. I had a good friend in the Corsa SF Bay Area chapter in the mid 70’s who had one.
Someone they entrusted its care to ran it through an automatic car wash and it peeled the SST wrapper right off the roof. There is a steel panel underneath. The car wash insurance carrier had to cough up somewhere around 5 grand to make the replacement repairs. I never got to see it because she and her husband sold it before I met them.
Ford folklore abounds, not sure if this is really true, but I heard one story that one of the stainless 1936 models was painted, and ended up in a body shop in Corpus Christi, TX. The tech noticed how difficult hammer and dolly work was to straighten it, and it was then discovered it had a stainless body. I would welcome any corrections here!
I have seen the stainless Fords in a Cleveland Ohio museum.They are quite a sight and very well preserved.Thinking of the “metal” in cars of today compared to stainless is quite a contrast.
Allegheny Ludlum, rather than Ludlow, I believe.
Yes. Typo fixed now. Thanks.
Check out the Edgecomb Autocar trucks.
A couple of minutes with Photoshop to restore the colour balance…
Ford also made at least two ‘A’ model Fords, at one point I had the chance to buy one for a good price, wish I’d ad the $ at the time .
I hope it and all other one offs wind up safely kept in museums or collections .
-Nate
That’s Three Rivers Stadium in the background, former home of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Steelers. It cost $55 million to build, opened in 1970, and was demolished scarcely 30 years later. What a waste.
Trailing a bit more off topic, but I like old MLB ballparks “almost” as much as I like old cars. Those bright, shiny new “cookie-cutter” multipurpose stadiums, such as 3 Rivers, seemed to be a great idea when first planned and built. But they quickly fell out of favor with team owners who demanded that their cities build them even newer, single-purpose parks that could hold more luxury boxes and amenities to drive up owners’ revenues (and the cost to taxpayers, visitors, and average fans). The list also includes:
– Seattle Kingdome (Mariners/Seahawks 1977-1999); 22 years
– Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium (Braves/Falcons 1966-1996); 30 years
– Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (Twins/Vikings 1982-2013); 31 years
– Riverfront Stadium (Reds/Bengals 1970-2002); 32 years
– Veterans Stadium (Phillies-Eagles 1971-2003); 32 years
Two MLB-only parks built in the mid-1990s were also abandoned after a ridiculously short time, Globe Life in Arlington (Rangers) and Turner Field in Atlanta (Braves). But at least these last two were repurposed rather than demolished.
Indeed, and that’s the fountain at Point State Park.
You mean 4. Autocar made a few trucks with stainless cabs back in the day for Edgecomb Steel:
http://forums.justoldtrucks.com/21386/Stainless-Steel-Autocar
In the late 1970s I was in the possession of some original tooling for the early examples of the Lucas Wing Mirrors used on 1950s & earlier British cars. The early parts were in mild steel, then chrome plated. I was researching the possibility of having them pressed in stainless, using the original tooling.
I drove to northern New Jersey and visited a metal stamping facility called Carey Metal Products, and in the back of my Dodge van I had brought examples of the tooling dies. They took a couple dies into their testing office and performed a Rockwell hardness test on each die.
As they feared, the dies, while robust enough to stamp out tens of thousands of mild steel parts, could not be used for stainless steel. I was advised that the dies for pieces that had only slight curves would last perhaps a couple of hundred pressings, while those pieces with more prominent curves would likely destroy the dies after as few as a couple of pressings. Part of the reason why so few parts could have been made was they had already been used to produce thousands of pieces for Lucas, and were already slightly worn, allowing the stainless more “wiggle room” to deform as the dies came together.
Back then I was the owner of an all original, black with red wine leather interior, 1967 Lincoln convertible sedan, and was familiar with the Allegheny-Ludlum stainless steel version. I made mention of the various Ford vehicles with stainless steel bodies, showing them the photos of my Lincoln. The tone of the conversation quickly became really animated, as a couple of guys who worked there had been involved with pressing a few of the smaller Lincoln stainless body parts.
I learned that Ford didn’t actually press those stainless parts, They let A-L take the dies to other shops to do the work, and Carey was asked to make some of the smaller parts. They explained that in making those panels and pieces, the dies in each situation were basically destroyed, and ended up being scrapped after making the stainless examples. I remember bring told that for every piece that was stamped correctly, there were dozens of examples that came out wrong, mostly because the stainless didn’t stretch like the mild steel did. Instead of a fast pressing process like we see in videos of the car body stamping process, they did these slowly, because they feared the dies would fracture, and some of them did crack.
We ended up sending the Lucas dies to India, and pretty soon we had very nice examples of reproduction Lucas Wing Mirrors in chrome plated brass. We also made the connection in India to have the dies made to reproduce the later Lucas Wing Mirrors that were originally in polished stainless.
Years later, when I started reading about the making of those stainless steel Ford products, I realized that for each version, they were building a car from dies they no longer needed, as the next year’s basic designs had changed drastically, resulting in all new dies for the new bodies. Hence it was OK for the dies to be destroyed in making the stainless steel versions.