Auto ID #132 FINISHED!

[DonW]

OK!

[CorvairJim]

Doggone it - I go away for a few weeks... OK, months... and an easy one like this one comes up in the Auto I.D. game! One look and I said to myself, "That's a Marmon. A little searching should give me the specifics... "

[Art Anderson]

Agreed. "Conservative" describes it well.

I mean, how much more conservative can you get than a color scheme consisting of two shades of gray?

Keep a couple of things in mind: For starters, Marmon's market (much like say, Pierce Arrow or Peerless, even Franklin) was primarily in the northeast quadrant of the US, where super-luxury, coachbuilt cars tended to be bought by rather conservative people. Although certainly a car for the very wealthy, most were "old money", more given to rather polite, reserved society, than being seen driving, or riding in, flashy brightly painted exotic luxury vehicles.

In addition, by 1932, it was the darkest of dark times economically, and people with the money to buy such cars, particularly in the cities of the upper midwest and the east coast from say, Baltimore north to Boston (where breadlines stretched seemingly interminably) were even more cautious about flaunting their wealth--so their cars tended to be painted in colors like these, intended to "tone down" their appearance on the street.

The more flamboyant cars of the era tended to be out on the west coast, or in South Florida, where rather "loud" color schemes didn't really attract negative attention. Hollywood was a hotbed of the very stylish roadsters, convertible sedans, and phaetons, closed car body styles being pretty much the rule east of the Mississippi in that era.

Art