Reader-Designed Speedsters, pt. 2

Motor Age was one of the most popular journals of its era for spreading the gospel of automobile, and in our previous issue, we highlighted a columnist in 1919 who had published several reader-submitted speedster designs. For the most part they were remakes of a popular car of the time, a chassis-up re-body to make the existing model a sporty speed car.

The designs rendered from reader suggestions were quite inspired, varied, and innovative, and they show that the concept of “speedster” had touched a nerve in the American audience who read Motor Age. How deeply into hearts and minds did the speedster dream reach we may never know, but remember this: the speedster concept is only one of a few automotive ideas that has persisted from the early 1900s Until Now. That’s a looong time, and today we find that it still stirs hearts and minds…

In this post we’ll feature some more reader ideas.

Facelifts and Upgrades

F.J. Murphy of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania wrote

In mounting a sport body on a 1915 Ford chassis I wish to have a shell built over the regular Ford radiator, shell to be shaped somewhat like a Rolls-Royce.

Murphy continued with

I would like to have the body shaped somewhat like a Murray roadster seating two passengers, with a disappearing seat in the rear deck… Disk wheels of conical type.

1915 Ford Model T redesigned using a RR radiator and sport-body speedster theme.

Murray was a small and underfunded company that originated in Pittsburgh in 1916, reorganized in Newark due to staff and funds, moved its tent on to Boston for more of the same reasons, and then folded for good in 1929. Its radiator resembled that of a Rolls-Royce and it made two models in the nineteen-teens, a roadster and a sedan. This reader-requested design probably did not stray too far from a Murray, so it makes one wonder: why to go to all of this bother with a Model T? Why not just buy a defunct Murray? Oh, well…

F.B. Kreybill of San Francisco, California had a better idea by starting with a classy chassis. He wrote:

Publish roadster design with deck to be mounted upon a 1912 Pierce-Arrow 6-36 chassis.

Redesigning a 1912 Pierce Arrow. Or is it Pierce-Arrow? depends on the year…

Pierce of Buffalo, New York was considered to be one of the classiest makes of the period. Pierce designs were meant to attract the hoi-poloi who had the wherewithal to spend and spend big. Pierce was among the first to publish lifestyle ads that baldly implied This is how the better half lives. Without, of course, coming right out and stating it.

1910 Pierce Arrow lifestyle ad. Those young guns had it all, eh?

In 1912 Pierce advertised 21 body styles on 3 chassis, made to order. The Model 66 was the longest chassis at 140”, but one could specify the runabout Model 66, which sported about on a shortened 133.5” wheelbase. No doubt Kreybill was thinking big when he asked for a design of a sport-bodied Pierce-like roadster!

As we have written before in a prior post, the runabout’s Spartan, non-nonsense design was probably the origin of the speedster concept. Pierce’s idea of a runabout was a bit jazzier, as seen in this illustration, but it was still a speedster!

1909 Pierce Arrow Runabout ad.

Remakes and Reimagining

An anonymous reader from Wapum, Wisconsin wrote:

Publish a sketch for converting Maxwell into a snappy racer, using the same radiator and hood. The dash should come well back, drop straight down and continue to seats, two tanks at rear, no tail.

Maxwell redesign into a sport-bodied speedster. Note the abrupt vertical drop in the cowl, implying a big engine under the hood.

Despite the reader’s admonition to not have any sort of tail, the sketch artist produced some sort of shroud to smooth out the speedster’s end parts and to make it a more coherent design. Race cars of this era were evolving into a more enclosed body, and this one does not stray from that. The cowl drop was a stylistic artifice not unlike many a power yacht design of the era, and it also appeared on several of the speedster proposals sketched out in European ateliers throughout the 1920s and even into the 1930s

1930 Stutz convertible coupe roadster, Salon catalog, LeBaron design. image courtesy AACA library

Did it make that speedster faster? No, but….snazzier? Sure thing!

E.G. Williams of Sioux Falls, South Dakota requested:

Publish suggestion for converting a 1913 Kissel 6-66 into a rakish-looking speedster.

1913 Kissel Touring redesigned into a speedster with a bullet tail.

Kissel, the Hartford, Wisconsin firm that had the longest run of continuous speedster production of any company of its era, had not whole-heartedly embarked on that theme until its introduction of the Kissel Silver Special Speedster of 1918. This was a car that took the show circuit by storm and caused a noticeable stir among designers after they witnessed the crowd appeal of such a concept. The crowds spoke - now, that was a speedster!

1918 Kissel Silver Special Speedster. Image courtesy AACA Library

If you trace the history of Kissel, you notice that they had already been creating rakish models since 1909 for the racy set – just not as updated as the design penned for Mr. Williams’ 1913 chassis that he wanted to repurpose.

1912 Kissel Sixty Semi-Racer. catalog image courtesy AACA library

Kissel made four sets of chassis in 1913, ranging in wheelbase from 116” to 140.” And while Kissel in 1913 only made their Semi-Racer speedster using the 116” wheelbase of the Series Thirty, the Williams “rakish-looking speedster” would have used the monstrous 140” chassis!

Despite the availability in 1919 of a ready-made (and renamed) Kissel Custom-Built Speedster planted on a 124” wheelbase, which would soon go by its nickname, the “Gold Bug,” Williams was considering a different route. Hopefully he recycled that 1913 Semi-Touring chassis into a handsome sport-bodied speedster akin to what Motor Age had sketched for him. Certainly a racier-looking result when compared to those dotted lines of the touring body profile…

Makes ya wonder – did it ever get built?