Tag Archives: 1915

Awesome Classic Commercial Vehicles

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The Michael Banfield Collection

Offered by Bonhams | Staplehurst, U.K. | June 14, 2014

 1915 Peerless TC4 4-Ton Open Back

Photo - Bonhams

Photo – Bonhams

This sale from Bonhams includes quite a number of really awesome commercial vehicles. I don’t have enough time to feature them individually, but because they’re so cool (and you so rarely see them at auction), I thought I’d do two posts that cover the coolest among them (which is pretty much all of them).

This truck is from one of America’s premier luxury car manufacturers. They started building trucks in 1911 and the U.S. Army loved them. The British government bought 12,000 of them between 1915 and 1918, during the First World War. This thing uses a 6.8-liter four-cylinder and was in service with the British government until 1956. It’s beautiful. And it should sell for between $34,000-$42,000. Click here for more.

Update: Sold $72,173.

1922 Tilling-Stevens TS3A Open Top Double Deck Bus

Photo - Bonhams

Photo – Bonhams

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Hispano-Suiza Omnibus

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1915 Hispano-Suiza 15/20HP Omnibus

Offered by Bonhams | Paris, France | February 6, 2014

1915 Hispano-Suiza 15-20HP Omnibus

How about this for unexpected and seriously cool? This is an earlier Hispano-Suiza – before they started building cars in France. They built fast cars, they built luxury cars. And they built public transport omnibuses too, apparently.

Being a country’s main automobile manufacturer sort of lends you to being a jack of all trades and that’s what Hispano-Suiza became. They even built aircraft engines and aircraft during the war. This 15/20HP model was new for 1909 and they attached the four-cylinder engine from that model to a commercial chassis in the mid-1910s for vehicles like this. It seats 10 and there is a bench on the roof. I love it!

This thing was restored long ago – the paint is 20 years old. The current owner has had it since 2007 and the catalog states that it will need further work to be roadworthy. Good luck finding another one like it anywhere. It should bring between $230,000-$300,000. Click here for more info and here for more from this sale.

Update: Sold $234,151.

Update: Sold, Bonhams Paris 2022, $169,742.

Metz Model 25

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1915 Metz Model 25 Tourer

Offered by Bonhams | Harrogate, U.K. | November 14, 2012

This is the third Metz I can recall coming up for auction in the past two months. I really wanted to feature one of the other two but it never fit on the schedule. So when I saw this one third from the end of Bonhams’ lot list for their Harrogate sale (here), I had to feature it.

Charles Herman Metz founded the car company that bore his name in 1909 in Waltham, Massachusetts. He bought out the Waltham Manufacturing Company – a company he co-founded and was subsequently booted from. They were producing Waltham and Orient Buckboard cars when he bought them out. Metz produced cars in their factory but they also offered them on the “Metz Plan” where consumers would pay a weekly fee and have parts shipped to their homes, where they would assemble it themselves. It was a mail-order car – in parts. Which is interesting, but not great if you needed a car, say… anytime in the next 4-to-6 months. Metz folded in 1922.

No word on if this four-cylinder Metz was a home-build or a factory car, but it was involved in an accident in 1915 before it had even covered 600 miles. It was then promptly garaged for the next (gets his calculator out)… the next 55 years! That’s right, this thing sat in storage somewhere until 1970 when it was dragged out and had its engine rebuilt with only 564 miles on the odometer. It has since been completely restored and can be yours for $19,000-$24,000. Fore more information, click here.

Update: Sold $13,600.

Stanley Mountain Wagon

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1915 Stanley Model 820 Mountain Wagon

Offered by RM Auctions | Hershey, Pennsylvania | October 12, 2012

Need to transport 12 people somewhere and don’t want to drive the same bland, 12-passenger Ford E-Series van as everyone else? Could I interest you in a 12-passenger convertible? There is even one surviving 15-passenger variant. Regardless of how many passengers you can carry, the Stanley Mountain Wagon is one of the coolest cars of all time.

These vehicles were available from 1908 to 1916 and used a 30 horsepower, two-cylinder steam engine. They were used for things like sightseeing tours in Yellowstone National Park. There is one just like this at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, and, although it appears average in size in the picture here – they are massive in real life. The wheelbase is only an inch shorter than that of a Ford Excursion – the veritable limousine among SUVs. And they are tall. When I saw the one in Reno, I became instantly fascinated. I just stood there are stared at it and inspected it – perhaps even creeping onto the gravel beyond where you are supposed to stand. Oops, don’t worry, I didn’t hurt anything.

This one has known ownership since WWII, including some well known and important collections. This is also the only Stanley Model 820 with its original, Stanley-built body – although it was restored a number of years ago. Steam vehicles are really cool to start with, but when you add in a very strange bodystyle like this, it just makes it even cooler. This is expected to sell for between $200,000-$250,000. For more information, click here. And for more from RM at Hershey, click here.

Update: Not sold.

1915 Peerless Touring Car

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1915 Peerless 48 HP Seven-Passenger Touring

Offered by RM Auctions | Hershey, Pennsylvania | October 11-12, 2012

This big WWI-era touring car is beautiful. Then again, I’m usually pretty crazy for these cars – but to be one from the “Three P’s” (Peerless, Packard, Pierce-Arrow) makes it even more special. Peerless got off to kind of a slow start in the early 1900s, but by the Teens, production was in full swing and they were turning out some of the finest cars you could buy.

The cars were built in Cleveland and this one has a 48 horsepower 9.5-liter T-head straight-six. The car seats seven and the original owner had five kids – making this their minivan. When the owner, a wealthy Pennsylvanian businessman, died in 1933, the car was put into storage for the next 30 years.

Light work was done on the car over that period by the purchaser’s grandson, but it wasn’t until 2003 that the car was fully restored, making its show circuit debut in 2010, reaping awards wherever it went. It is believed that this car has only covered 24,500 miles since new and it is the only 1915 Peerless 48 HP Seven-Passenger Touring known to exist and it is being sold from the same family that bought it in 1915. For more information, click here. And for more from RM in Hershey, click here.

Update: Not sold.

1915 Crane-Simplex

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1915 Crane-Simplex Model 5 Sport Berline by Brewster

Offered by Bonhams | Greenwich, Connecticut | June 3, 2012

Tell me that isn’t a beautiful car. Quite a number of cars of this vintage have upright grilles that lead the cowl straight back to the firewall and passenger compartment. It’s like somebody fitted two rectangles together and called it a day. But look at the flow of the front of this car – how the cowl sweeps right into the windshield. It’s one of my favorite early automotive design touches. The roof rack completes the picture of this car, full of a wealthy family, their belongings strapped to the roof, travelling on to some Gilded Age vacation home on the New England coast.

Crane-Simplex is one of those marques that went through quite a few different names and owners over the years. A brief history: The Smith & Mabley Manufacturing Company began building the S&M Simplex in 1904. Two years later the company was broke and it was absorbed by the Simplex Automobile Company, the badging was shortened to “Simplex.” In 1915, the Crane Motor Car Company purchased Simplex and Crane-Simplex was born. In 1920, Mercer (and the ill-fated Hare’s Motors corporation) acquired Crane-Simplex for two years before Henry Crane (who founded the Crane Motor Car Company) bought it back after Hare’s Motors went bust. He tried to revive the company but it was gone from the marketplace by 1924.

The car featured here has a six-cylinder engine displacing 9.24-liters and it is from the first year of production. The body is by Brewster and, because the engine puts out significant power, it’s big. Crane-Simplex cars were for the very wealthy – John D. Rockefeller had one. They were well built and expensive. The one seen here sold for $13,800 in 1915. Only 121 Crane-Simplex cars were made in total.

The car is presented as “original” while having been “worked over” (which I take to mean “restored as needed”) so it can be driven long distances. Original or not, this would be one hell of a car to drive on a classic car tour. It’s one of the most exclusive pre-war American automobiles. It is exceptional.

The pre-sale estimate is $100,000-$140,000, and after looking at it, this sounds remarkably fair. To read the complete lot description, click here. And for more from Bonhams in Connecticut, click here.

Update: Not sold.

Brewster-Knight Model 41

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1915 Brewster-Knight Model 41 Landaulet

Offered by RM Auctions | Phoenix, Arizona | January 19, 2012

Photo – RM Auctions

Here’s something you don’t see everyday. Brewster & Co. were a famous coachbuilding company based in New York as well as the American importers of French Delaunay-Belleville cars (rare enough in their own right). They were also the largest coachbuilder for Springfield, Massachusetts-based Rolls-Royce of America (and British Rolls-Royce once their American arm shut down in 1931).

During the First World War, Delaunay-Bellevilles were hard to come by and Brewster turned to building their own cars. This 1915 Model 41 was from the first year of manufacture and it featured the sleeve-valve Knight engine – as did so many other [Company Name Here]-Knight branded automobiles. The 40 horsepower four-cylinder engine was quiet – and expensive. Perhaps too expensive as Brewster-Knight built roughly 500 cars before Rolls-Royce of America acquired the company in 1925.

The pre-sale estimate on this car is $60,000-$80,000. I’ve seen some Brewster-bodied cars (notably those Brewster-Fords with that curvy, pointed grille) sell here and there but I don’t recall a Brewster-Knight.

The auction catalog says this car was probably built in 1916, even though it is title differently. Read for yourself here and find out more about the auction here.

Update: Sold $88,000.