Manhattan Show

To the Grand Central Palace, Manhattan, each day last week flocked hundreds of businessmen, clerks, sports, idlers, professional men, New Yorkers, out-of-towners, taxi drivers, foreigners and not a few thugmen, national and international celebrities, blackamoors and sailors, some with their ladies, some in groups, most of them talking animatedly, all of them peering, prying, pushing and querying, and some of them buying.

Automobiles had attracted them. The following makes were exhibited:

Auburn Davis Erskine Cadillac Diana Essex Buick Dodge Flint Chandler Duesenberg Franklin Chevrolet Du Pont Gardner Chrysler Elcar Hudson Hupmobile Oakland Star Jordan Oldsmobile Steams-Knight Kissel Packard Studebaker Lincoln Paige Stutz Locomobile Peerless Velie McFarlan Pierce-Arrow Whippet Marmon Pontiac Wills-Ste. Claire Moon Reo Willys-Knight Nash Rickenbacker

The following trucks:

Atterbury General Motors Selden

Autocar Graham Star

Chevrolet Larrabee Stewart

Commercial Oakland Yellow Knight

Cunningham Reo Walker

Federal Republic Ward

Garford Schacht

The following taxicabs:

Dodge Bros. Hertz

Oakland Yellow

People who came to see Fords or Cunninghams (pleasure cars) were disappointed. For reasons peculiar to their manufacturers these two were not displayed. Nor were displayed some of the heavier motor trucks--White, Mack, International, Pierce-Arrow, Diamond T.* Those in the jostling throng who could read had seen in the daily press the following figures relative to 1926 U. S. motor car production:

Total Production 4,480000

Passenger cars 3,950,000

Motor trucks 530,000

Production of closed cars 2,926,000

Per cent, closed cars 74

And the following figures relative to 1926 motor car registration:

Motor vehicles in U. S 22,330,000 Passenger cars (State reports)...19,520,000 Motor trucks (State reports) 2,810,000 World registration of motor vehicles 27,500,000 Per cent of world registration in the U.S. 81

Those of the throng who knew aught of motors and who were able to push near enough to the cars to see, sensed at once that the Show held nothing new (of importance) from an engineering standpoint Certain cars, it is true, had effected minor improvements: additional bearings to the crank shaft (Dodge); rubber cushioning of engines (Buick); adding of a fourth speed (Paige); crankcase ventilation (Oldsmobile). But all of these features have been used before.

Progress in lighting was evident. Oldsmobile and Oakland had added the tilt-ray control, already used by Cadillac; and McFarlan showed the Ryan head lamp which gives an unusually diffused light, including a strong sidewise light which makes the spot light unnecessary.

Conspicuous among the new body lines were those of Hudson-Essex which have eliminated the angles on hood and radiator; on the Reo Flying Cloud which is a lower hung and much "snappier" revision of previous Reos; in Stutz which exhibited a fabric body.

Among the sportier introductions was the low-hung Six Cylinder Jordan (green finish with khaki top). Chevrolet had a-"Sport Cabriolet" which is a coupe of roadster type: an enclosed front compartment with a rumble seat in back. The Chevrolet line is now finished in grey and uses disc wheels. Chevrolet advertising spoke of "the most outstanding automotive success in recent years." For other cars, other merits were advertised.

But the most conspicuous announcement came from Studebaker. Albert Russel Erskine has, since 1915, been President of the Studebaker Corp., South Bend, Ind. In-September and October, 1924, he went to Europe, visited automobile plants, asked questions of manufacturers and engineers, carefully inspected every car and body in the shows of London and Paris. Favorably impressed, President Erskine invited to Paris every Studebaker dealer and representative in Europe and some from Asia, gave a banquet, rose from his seat, fired at his agents a series of questions prepared by himself, received their answers in written form, took the answers back to the U. S., pondered them well. Then, for two years, Studebaker engineers and body designers pored over blueprints, utilized proving grounds--and produced the Erskine Six. It is a small car (no smaller than an Overland Whippet). It is low-hung; has a small, high speed, high compression motor; "2 1/3 litres," the advertising says -- which is the Parisian way of saying that a motor is 40 horsepower.

Living testimony to the potency of double-page "spreads" in the Saturday Evening Post and else-where--spreads that carried Mr. Erskine's photograph and a signed statement* by the Studebaker directors--greater crowds gazed longer at the little Erskine than at any other exhibit.

*See footnote, col. 3.

*Other less famed trucks that were absent: Gotfredson, Hahn, Henney, Hercules, Hermath, Kankakee, Lathrop, Master, Menominee, Michigan, Oneida, Oshkosh, Red Ball, Sayers, Standard, Stoughton, Tiffin, Traylor, Vulcan.

*The statement concluded: "We. . . chose the Erskine name is Erskine primarily because responsible. . Albert . ." Russel