For decades, Santa Claus has conducted public relations work for car dealerships, as shown by this shot, taken 95 years ago today – December 17, 1927. In the above picture, a San Francisco Hudson-Essex dealer is delivering Christmas cheer to students at the Gough School for the Deaf, during a week when its “Christmas Essex” meandered all over the Bay Area with Santa perched atop on a wooden sleigh.
The dealership involved in this PR shot was Stanley W. Smith, Inc., located just three blocks from where this photo was taken.
Since the Essex car brand has long since retreated from most people’s memory, an overview of the marque’s 15-year history may be helpful. A subsidiary of Hudson, Essex is best remembered for being an early promotor of fully-enclosed cars. And since its cars were well built and relatively affordable, they found a solid following in the 1920s among North America’s growing middle class. Regarding closed vehicles, the Hudson-Essex Company’s sales manager noted that when the closed Essex was introduced in 1918, closed cars were considered luxuries – but within a few years it was open cars that were considered luxuries. The middle class owed a debt of gratitude, and a lot of comfort, to Essex. The Essex nameplate lasted until 1933, after which time it was replaced in Hudson’s lineup by Terraplane.
Though 1920s Essex ads promoted the car’s ability to sustain high speed all day long, our featured “Christmas Essex” (a 1927 Super-Six) was lucky to achieve a walking pace.
Initially envisioned as a showroom attraction and as a clever way to deliver Christmas gifts to the dealership’s employees, when the white sleigh-car was first steered onto San Francisco streets in mid-December, it was mobbed by children. Capitalizing on an enticing public relations move, Stanley W. Smith added a few more routes to Santa’s schedule. Namely, the dealer advertised in Bay Area newspapers that Santa’s Essex would visit places where ill, disabled or “shut-in” kids resided.
Identified by door markings proclaiming The Christmas Essex from Stanley W. Smith Inc., this vehicle called on every children’s hospital in San Francisco and Oakland, homes for crippled children, and the dealership asked the public to suggest other homes and places where they could find children who would ordinarily not be able to see Santa Claus at the downtown locations where the white-bearded man typically visited.
The Christmas Essex’s actual travel continued to be slow. Children often swarmed around the Essex, prompting San Francisco’s police officers to kindly request that the dealership keep Santa off of downtown streets at rush hour to avoid gridlock.
And it was under these circumstances that the Essex visited the Gough School for the Deaf eight days before Christmas. The driver parked on Gough St., just south of the Washington St. intersection, and the school’s principal brought her children out to meet St. Nick. Santa carried a bag of toys in his roof-mounted sleigh, and furthermore, the Christmas Essex was equipped with a letter box where children could deposit letters addressed to Santa Claus.
During its brief tenure, the Christmas Essex brought joy and spread goodwill throughout San Francisco. We can only guess whether this was a profitable business move, because while it certainly brought attention to Stanley W. Smith, Inc. and its products, a few weeks of driving this rig around the region must have been mighty time consuming. And it doesn’t appear that the dealership attempted this type of feat in future years. Though while it may not have generated additional car sales, it sure brought a lot of smiles to where they were needed the most. This was undoubtedly the jolliest Essex ever.
Thank you for a wonderful piece of American!
I assume that the wood-framed Essex sedan body needed some structural reinforcement to support Santa and his sleigh. These early enclosed car bodies were not exactly very strong.
I love SF and the 1910s so this was great to read, thank you.
What a lovely idea! We have a tradition in my town that Santa rides around town on a fire truck, throwing bags of sweets to the children – but that’s spread over several hours, and he goes everywhere (small town). Sending him to visit the shut-in a hundred years ago – that’s wonderful. Even if there is a commercial side to it.
I’d have thought they’d just paint an existing lighter-coloured car white, but the photo shows that even the chassis is white. Painted white from the factory? Surely that would be unusual considering what we’ve learnt here about early attempts at white automotive paint.
Good point about the white car – I wonder what the story of the car’s color really was? I’d be surprised if the dealer painted a car just for this purpose, but equally surprised if Essex actually sold white cars.
The advertisement about “50 mph all day long” has a back story. As Bill Williams wrote in a Drive Report on a 1936 Hudson Terraplane in Special Interest Autos for August-September 1972:
“Here’s a flathead 6 that saw production for 24 long years–1924 through 1947. It started out as an absolutely terrible engine for the first Essex 6 of 1924. What made it so awful was an inadequate oil supply (dippers and oil feed to the front main only) and only three mains. Now three mains weren’t so bad in themselves, because Marmon, Pontiac, Chevrolet and later Hudson 6s used only three for years and got along just fine. But as the oil got hot in this Essex 6, very little of it reached the center main nor #6 rod bearing, and one or the other would usually melt. A wild 5.60:1 rear axle didn’t exactly help.
“Hudson replaced plenty of Essex engines free when they burned up under warranty. Later, when Hudson charged a $50 replacement fee, they still had plenty of takers. As John Bond pointed out in ‘A Field Day for Fiascos’ (SIA #7, pp.16-19), that initial Essex 6 was one of the industry’s alltime great mistakes.
“Hudson clung to it doggedly, though, and [Chief Engineer Stuart] Baits did a slow but remarkable job of improving it. The basic problem before 1927 was an inadequate plunger-type oil pump. In 1930, Hudson brought out the Greater 8, which was merely the Essex 6 with two more cylinders. But the 8 couldn’t get by with oil feed to the front of the pan only, so Baits developed a double-acting pump that fed oil to the front and the rear at the same time. Again, though, the 8 stuck with dippers. Baits, in fact, refused to go to full pressure until the re-engineered Hudson 6 of 1948.
“At any rate, when the 8 got oil feed to both ends in 1930, so did the Essex 6 (same pump). In 1934, when the 6 got a final reaming to 3 X 5 inches (212 cid), Baits tossed in a redesigned pump that gave twice the flow, and that finally brought the engine up to date.
Another problem (I’m summarizing here) was that the cylinders were siamesed in threes with only 5/32 inch of metal between cylinders. “Bore distortion was horrible with temperature changes, and for that reason Terraplane went to pinned rings in 1934. Normal rings wouldn’t seat as they moved around on out-of-round cylinders.”
In other words, if you’re ever transported back in time, maybe pass on an Essex 6!
I have to wonder if there are any “stock” survivors that haven’t been repowered with a post-1934 engine.
There’s a discussion on a club forum about safe top speeds (35-40 mph seems to be the consensus) that includes this:
“On a 250 mile run I took the (1928) Coupe up to 60 mph for a while. It went well but blew a big end bearing later that day (coincidence?)”
https://forum.hetclub.org/discussion/365986/how-fast-is-too-fast
Of course, they’re using modern oils and many owners have switched to higher-speed diffs and/or overdrives.
1625 Van Ness where the dealership was located, is now a Guitar Center store.
It looked to me like that block was sort of an “auto row” in the 1920s. That 1625 building had previously been a Stevens-Durya dealership, and there was also a Hupmobile dealer on the block, as well as several others.
When I lived in San Francisco (1974-77), that stretch of Van Ness was an auto row. It may still be for all I know.
I’m sure that in 1927, 50 mph was considered high speed.
This is a great photo and fantastic idea ~ I’d have loved it as a child living in the sticks if Santa came ’round on a car top or flatbed farm truck .
Related story : in the mid 1930’s my late, beloved step father took his father’s 6 cylinder Terraplane out one night with his college buddies and ran it up to an indicated 65 MPH and bent all the connecting rods, pissing his father off to no end as they were stuck somewhere South until the $ was wires and the car fixed .
-Nate