| Automobiles of Arizona Friday, January 16, 2009 |
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| “The Dr. Barbara Mae Atwood Collection” | |||||||||
| 1937 Lincoln Convertible Victoria by Brunn | |||||||||
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Model K. 150bhp, 414 cu. in. L-head V12 engine, three-speed manual transmission, suspension via front and rear semi-elliptic leaf springs, solid front axle, live rear axle, four-wheel power-assisted mechanical drum brakes. Wheelbase: 145" Of all the coachbuilders to clothe Lincoln chassis, none is more closely associated with the marque than Brunn & Co. of Buffalo, New York. The association began well before Henry Ford’s purchase of the ailing Lincoln Motor Company, in the era of founder Henry Leland. Hermann A. Brunn apprenticed to his uncle’s carriage works in 1898, then spent a few years working at the New Haven Carriage Co. and at H.H. Babcock at Watertown, New York. Back in his hometown of Buffalo, he set up Brunn & Co. in 1908 specifically to build automobile bodies. When the Lincoln was first introduced in 1920, it was widely praised for its engineering but panned for its looks. The bodies, upright and unappealing, had been designed by Leland’s son-in-law, a milliner. A business associate of Brunn’s recommended him to the Lelands as a design consultant, and a deal was arranged for twelve new body styles. After the Ford takeover, Brunn and Edsel Ford hit it off very well, and new designs from Buffalo continued. Small orders were built at Brunn’s workshops, but larger quantities were shopped out to Detroit-area companies. At its peak, Brunn & Co. employed 150 craftspeople and turned out some 20 bodies per month, mostly destined for Lincoln. In order to continue the tradition, Brunn sent his only son, Hermann C. Brunn, to Paris to apprentice with Kellner. The younger Brunn returned a year later well-versed in the carriage trade and joined his father’s company. Edsel Ford preferred that his suppliers specialize in certain types of bodies. Thus Judkins was assigned berlines and coupes, Willoughby the limousines and LeBaron the convertible sedans. Brunn was given the task of specializing in town cars and convertibles: soft-top broughams, cabriolets, victorias and dual-cowl phaetons. Brunn was one of the first to offer a roll-up fabric top for the chauffeur’s compartment in open-drive town cars. A cabriolet designed by Hermann Brunn for his own use in 1936 soon went into limited production as a Lincoln cataloged custom, both as an open-drive style and Touring Cabriolet with fixed chauffeur’s roof. From 1933, Brunn supplied to Lincoln a series of elegant Convertible Victorias, with blind rear quarters. The style had been a staple of Waterhouse, the Webster, Massachusetts, coachbuilder, but when Waterhouse foundered in 1932 Edsel Ford lobbied to keep the body type alive. The result was acquisition of the Waterhouse design rights by Brunn and continuation of the style through 1937. One can easily see the effect this might have had on the genesis of Edsel’s Lincoln Continental. One of these Convertible Victorias was ordered by Miss Eleanora Sears of Boston. The daughter of a shipping and real estate magnate and great-great granddaughter of Thomas Jefferson (but no relation to the Sears of Sears Roebuck), Eleanora Randolph Sears was born September 28, 1881. Raised in Beacon Hill society, she made her career as a sportswoman of international renown. By 1910 she had been proclaimed in print as “the best all-around athlete in American society,” and would win nearly 250 trophies in many sports during her lifetime. Her forte was tennis, where she won the US women’s doubles title in 1911, 1915, 1916 and 1917. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1968, shortly after her death. She also swam, becoming the first person to swim the four-and-a-half miles from Bailey’s Beach to First Beach in Newport, Rhode Island. She bred and trained show horses, and rode until the time she died. She took up squash in 1918, and helped to found the U.S. Women’s Squash Racquets Association ten years later, and participated in baseball, field hockey and auto racing. Above all, she liked to walk, and frequently made the 47-mile journey from Boston to Providence, her best time being nine hours and 53 minutes, set in 1926, at the age of 45. She owned many cars during her lifetime, including Rolls-Royce and Packard, but this Lincoln was a particular favorite. Ordered in her favorite color, a hue known as “Sears Maroon,” she specified that it have the 1936-style grille, fenders and free-standing chrome headlights. This body style, like most that Brunn built for Lincoln in 1937, retained 1936’s flat windshield, so the earlier nose on the car looks “right.” Hermann C. Brunn remembered it being the 13th of a 15-car order from Lincoln, and was equipped with an experimental white rubber covering on the running boards, supplied by Goodyear. She drove it avidly for several years, then laid it up during World War II. In 1950, when it was considered an “old car,” she gave it to a cousin, Henry Sears Lodge, then a student at Harvard. Lodge recalls driving it for ten years, then finding it rather thirsty at which point “Eleo,” as his cousin was known, took it back. Dr. Atwood purchased the car from Ted Swain in November 1991. It competed in the AACA Central Division Spring Meet in 1993, and earned AACA’s President’s Cup that year. More importantly, it took a Second in Class at Pebble Beach that August. She continued to show the car, which took an AACA National First at Punta Gorda, Florida in 1995 and Grand National honors the same year at Moline, Illinois. It was most recently shown at AACA’s Western Division Fall Meet in 1998. The car is competition-ready today. The Sears Maroon lacquer exhibits a deep shine, and all sheet metal is straight and true. The doors shut well. An interesting feature of this Brunn body is a hinged chrome flap that automatically covers the window gap when the side windows are down. The white rubber running boards are in excellent condition, and brightwork is similarly in fine condition. The tan canvas top looks as new, and a top boot is included in the trunk. The interior is done in beige leather, again fine, and there is beige carpet on the floor. The woodgrain dashboard and window trim are excellent, and the odometer reads 33,215 miles. The engine is clean and highly detailed. The undercarriage and running gear, painted in body color gloss maroon, is spotless. The car has not been driven recently, but is expected to be running at time of sale. A thorough recommissioning should be carried out, however, before committing it to road use. One of the most fascinating parts of the collector car hobby is the glimpses they provide into the history of the time. Seldom do we discover an exceptional car with colorful and fascinating history from new – as is clearly the case with Eleanora Randolph Sears’ Lincoln. |
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