Quote:
Originally Posted by Ultramaroon
It may turn out to be threadworthy after all. Definitely not the Nash. I first noticed the curved line across the bottom of the windshield. Will spend some time looking after work. Thanks, guys.
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I have been searching for 2 hours and remain stumped. It is just such a generic "every man" car from the early twenties to the mid thirties that it could be just about anything.
Let's look at what we do know:
If we presume the driver owns it then we can make some guesses at status. He is dressed in the typical central European army uniform of the period. He has brass buttons and a low neck tunic that would make him an officer (note the differences in the uniform of the guy in the back). Can't tell what is on the shoulder boards but there seems to be something raised there but he has no collar patch that we can see. He also has one decoration which at that time would mean he likely did not serve in WW1. My guess is that he is below the rank of Captain and he would not have a huge income for high end cars. Would guess the year to be mid to late 1920s since the uniforms were a bit more "modern" by the 30s.
Although the US did export a very small number of cars between 1918 and 1939 they were far from a world leader and those cars were shipped by individuals not the manufacturers. The cost of shipping would not have been worth it for most people. The newly born auto industry could not even keep up with domestic demand and exporting wasn't even a thought yet. Europe at the time sent more cars to the US than came back across (mostly Rolls). I don't see a subaltern army officer having an imported car. I think this safely rules out any US made cars.
The European car business was booming in the post WW1 period. Unlike WW2 where all the factories got flattened most were intact and bought up by many to start car companies. This created more European manufacturers than can possibly be remembered. The problem is there are not a pile of period pictures that say what the car was to get a good idea of what they all looked like. Many of those cottage industry manufacturers went out of business when the depression hit and the cars were destroyed or used for scrap in WW2 so there are whole makes that have disappeared from the face of the earth. Germany, Belgium, Italy and France focused more on upscale cars so we can probably rule them out. Keep in mind this is a day when they made on or two models and not 400 different trim levels of each of them. The Soviet Union and the East European countries focused on utility vehicles more like the picture. Think it is a safe bet that it came from one of those.
Now the car itself sure as hell does have many of the features of a Nash but there are some that don't match any pictures I could find. First off it does not have suicide doors like all the Nashs of the time seem to. I could also not find any pictures of a Nash with wire wheels like those. We fall back to that damn lack of creativity for body styles they had. What we can see is that it does have exterior door handles (many touring cars did not), it has a pretty distinctive flat fronted rad (ease of manufacture?), both the front and rear fenders are formed (not just flat curved steel), and the rad cap seems to be shaped as a crown. Hard to tell how old it is from the condition of it since the roads then would beat the crap out of a car fast but it certainly does not appear to be new by any stretch.That drivers headlight aim would be a bitch if it wasn't only about 200 lumens or so though. The paint appears to be two tone, not that that helps identify it other than rule it out as a Model T which it obviously is not.
So the search continues!