What a car really should look like!

• 
• 
• 

The body of the Marmon Sixteen, introduced in 1931, was designed by the New York based firm Walter Dorwin Teague Associates, a company also responsible for such icons as Kodak’s Brownie camera, Texaco gas stations and interiors for several Boeing airliners. Mr. Teague, however, did not like automobiles and assigned the Marmon project to his car-crazy son, Walter Dorwin Jr. Dorwin, as he was known, was a M.I.T. student but came home from Boston to work weekends on the project. After this experience Dorwin built a model of, as he described it, “what a car really should look like.” When Howard Marmon saw the model, he was captivated, and gave Dorwin a set of chassis drawings to get things started. For the HCM, as the prototype was to be named after Howard Marmon’s initials, he decided on a V-12 engine, more powerful than an eight but much more economical than his flagship V-16. But when the prototype was completed in the fall of 1933, the recession had set in and the Marmon company went in receivership. Howard Marmon tried to sell his prototype to other auto manufacturers, but no one was interested and in the end Marmon took the car home and wrapped it in cellophane. There it remained until his death in 1943. The past few years the car has been in private ownership, but will now be offered by RM during their auction at Monterey. The auction is tomorrow August 19, so if you leave now, you might just make it!

Ajoutez un commentaire...