100 Years of Motoring

As we circulate to preview the latest collectors’ car auction, a 1913 Ford Model T and the newest car, a 2013 Chevrolet Corvette, reveals that this is not any auction. This is an auction spanning 100 years. Though perhaps the title of this talk should be 170 years of motoring because the DNA of two of the cars in our auction goes back to 1834.

That was the year when Gottlieb Daimler was born in Germany. He was born before the railway had arrived in continental Europe. There were steam trains in Britain but the mainlanders had not yet caught onto the idea. A decade later, in 1844 another giant of the automobile industry, Karl Benz was born in Germany. And 120 years later, their names would be combined in the name for Auction Lot number 2, the Mercedes Benz 220S and the Mercedes-Benz 190SL roadster (lot number 16).

It was said that the first motor race ever held was when the first two cars were manufactured. If that is the case, then it was Karl Benz second patent Motorwagen which would have been in that race. The Germans were a decade ahead of the rest of the world in the conception of the motor car. Of course, the French grabbed the idea and thanks to people such as Count De Dion, they turned motor car manufacturing into a major industry.

Unfortunately, the might of British industry which had shown the world how to make steam engines and railways, steam ships and manufactured goods of all kinds, was held back by the reluctance of the powers that be to allow motor cars free reign on their public highways.

The next man in our century and a half of motoring was Henry Royce. He was born in March 1863. Gottlieb Daimler was already 29 years of age and Karl Benz was 21. Henry Royce was also a driven man but he was driven to success as an engineer and businessman who manufactured electrical equipment before discovering that a market existed for a high quality car at the turn of the new century.

The 1936 Rolls-Royce 25-30 (Lot 14) has all the hallmarks of Sir Frederick Henry Royce who died three years before this car was delivered to its proud new owner, the artist Frank Salisbury. Royce’s supreme engineering skills and desire to create the very best car in the world are embodied in this car.

We now go from the man who built what was once called the best car in the world and sold them to hundreds of people a year to the man who wanted to sell a car to everyone in the world. Yes, you guessed it, four months after the creator of the Rolls-Royce was born in Peterborough in England, Henry Ford was born on a farm in Michigan in July 1863. Henry Ford is quite different to everyone else I will talk about tonight. His signature car, the Ford Model T, is not remembered for its beauty, it is not remembered for its speed, it is not remembered for the precision of its engineering.

The Ford Model T is remembered as the car that put the world on wheels and made the horse obsolete. More than 15 million Ford Model Ts were built from 1909 to 1927. At one stage in Australia, about four out of every five cars on Australian roads were the Model T. The magnificent Ford Model T we see here tonight was built in 1913 (Lot 2) when Henry was still wasting money putting brass on his cars. In 1915, he realised the error of his ways and painted steel replaced brass as he kept reducing his prices, again and again, and sales kept going up and up. And while brass Ford Model Ts weren’t the cars which made Ford a household name they are the most collectible ones today.

Eight months after Frederick Royce was born in England, and four months after Henry Ford was born another giant name in the motor car industry was born in Ohio in the New World. His name was James Ward Packard, born November 1863, and like Frederick Royce he went on to manufacture electrical equipment before becoming interested in motor cars. Just like Frederick Royce, James Packard understood the need for precision in electrical engineering and this idea of making a better product than his competitors also came through in the 1936 Packard 120 motor car (lot 18) and the 1940 Packard One-Ten Drophead Coupe (Lot 12). And like the Rolls-Royce 25-30, the Packards were manufactured after their namesake’s death and the creator’s ethic of superlative quality still shone through.

The same could be said of the next man to be born in our parade of the greatest men in motoring. His name was Ransom Eli Olds. He was born in June 1864. What a great American story was Ransom Olds. The son of a blacksmith with a passion for engines of any kind, he attracted capital to create a car all of his own. It wasn’t a Benz, or a Daimler or a Rolls-Royce. It wasn’t a Packard. Who would want a car called an Olds? So it became an Oldsmobile. The Curved Dash Oldsmobile was the first series production automobile and laid the foundation for the US automobile industry which became the powerhouse nation for motor cars in the 1920s.

Ransom Olds was also the victim of the dog-eat-dog capitalist system in the United States and the company which more his name was taken from him. He started a new company with an even better name: Reo. Reo built great cars exactly how Ransom wanted them built. He retired from active duties with the company until the Great Depression brought him back to Reo to take charge and help the company avoid bankruptcy.

Under his leadership the company created the Flying Cloud. It seems no coincidence that the 1933 Reo Flying Cloud was created during RE Olds tenure back at the top of the company which bore his name. It has the style of one of the true heroes of the American auto industry. Ladies and gentlemen, we are still only in 1864, Ransom Eli Olds and Henry Ford were still in nappies. It was another 11 years before another giant of the motor car industry was born in what is now part of the Czech Republic.

Can anyone guess who it was? Email your answer to Susanna@uniqueestates.com.au, the correct answer gets entered into a draw for a beautiful set of driving gloves