About this Pierce -Arrow  because you keep askin.....

We skipped the steam show and headed to Notre Dame.

There in the yard next to the depannuer, was the front end of a frog eyed monster peeking out from under a great  heap of tarppage.  Almost in unison I said to dad, ..."Pierce" ,and he chimed in... "arrow"   It was obvious and from what we could see it looked  like a cream puff.

 A genuine barn discovery!!!     Oh but did this beat any old steam show.....

I pulled the Packard into the yard and the locals stared and gathered around .  The owner of the yard with the Pierce in it turned out to be Fern Robert, the local undertaker.  He spoke no english but his wife was eager to speak for him.
"mon dieu .. what dat is a krysler?  eh bon eh?  is dat for sold??",they said of the Packard.   We realized we wouldn't get too far in detailed conversation but we were invited to look to our hearts content.
The car turned out to be an arrowline hearse .  The Pierce name was nowhere to be found on it.  In fact Mr. Robert was certain that it was a "packar".    When I in my youthful insolence suggested it was a  Pierce-Arrow , he  became indignant over the suggestion that he might not know what the car was.  Such a lack of diplomacy on my part.

Hubcaps , badges  some trim and even the clock and speedometer had the Pierce name carefully blanked out and Henney put in its place.
What was there was impressive and the quality of the machine was very evident.  All the mechanics and factory fittings were in practically serviceable condition.   Inside this "dracula berline" we were visited with the aroma of soggy mildewed velour , rotting wood, oil residue ,rat droppings and all the other  acoutrements of  such a  mecabremobile.  Neither of us were interestd in a hearse but it was a valuable historical piece as it was and certainly would have been meat to someone in a professional car society.  The structure was ricketty and would need the usual full restoration.  After a half hour of investigation, we left and headed to the show.

In Earlton Ed Forest (a close buddy) was at the show  with his 1931 Chev.  We mentioned the "henney" to him.  He was curious and suggested we return home together and  let him see the car.  Somehow we were diverted  and did not get to see the car again but Ed had the bug .    The next weekend we were sitting on Ed's back porch  doing the usual summer evening  talk antique cars , lemonade and   take in the sunset ritual when Ed coerced us into going back to Notre Dame.   Sunday afternoon we were back mauling over the Quebec hearse this time with Ed as a translator to speak French with the Robert's.

Ed was truly infatuated with the car and talked at length with the owner.   He found out that the car was bought in Montreal new by a funeral director and  was used until 1949 in Montreal .  It was put up at a professional auction in 1950 and the F Robert et Fils Concessionaires Funniere of Notre Dame du Nord PQ used it  until 1966 when they bought a new "Caddyack".  When Ed suggested that he wanted a Packard himself but that a Pierce was equally nice , M. Robert became irrate,  "mon d..tabarna...!!
ca cest une Packad!!!! quest ce cest un Pierce Arrow?"  So Ed got a charge of the same indignance I recieved.

We had no idea what was in Ed's mind at the time but wheels were turning.
On the drive home Ed said little.  The topic of conversation was elsewhere.

About a month later Ed called to have us come over and "see what he got."
    There it was in all its gloomy glory, taking up more than all of his carport.  Oh boy.  Mrs. Forest did not seem delighted to have a  moldy old hearse at the side of her house.          I thought it was neat that 64 year old  Ed could be such a rebel.

When queried, Ed could come up with no idea what he was going to do with it.  He just had it and had to have it.

Dad had some idea that it would make a parts car  or maybe a proper Pierce body could be found for it.  We speculated as to what might be done with it.   At that point we really had no respect for it as an intact and legitimate Henney product.  We  crawled under it and studied its construction.  There was a 166 wb and you could clearly see a boxed welded section in the frame where a 22 inch section was inserted and an auxillary driveshaft spliced in just ahead of the power brake unit.  This lead us to conclude that it was a standard chassis lengthened for the purpose.

By chance we made contact with a Mr. Otto Klausmeyer in the next few days.  He turned out to be a studebaker engineer at one time and  he new Pierces well.   Klausmeyer suggested that there were people who would have bodies around and suggested that Ed join the Pierce club but that  many classic bodies were suitable to the Pierce chassis.  Mr. Klausmeyer seemed keenly interested in Ed's car and wanted to know all the details.

Within a few months Ed found someone selling a Packard  Dietrich pheaton body and he got the idea that it would be ideal.
Klausmeyer had told us that some Pierce Dietrich bodies had ended up on Pierces.   However  I was of the opinion that a
Packard body belongs on a Packard and a Pierce body on a Pierce and never the twain shall meet.   We tracked down a limo body belonging to a Mr. Sands in New York state but Ed was not interested , and it was his car.

A year later in the spring.  Ed was talking to a famer in Verner  35 miles away who led him to what he thought was a Pierce  standing on a rock overgrown with brush in an abandoned farm yard.   Upon inspection, it turned out to be the remains of a 1934 Pierce 836A brougham.   Ed  was now certain this would be the body for his car.

This soon fizzled out.   The brougham body was a different syle and it had maybe 2 ounces of powdered wood in it .  The panels were fine oxide lacework and nothing more. There were some usable hinges and hardware which was scavenged.  That Brouhgam body still sits in the field to this day as far as I know.  Its been 19 years since I was there.

Ed became dissillusioned over th next while and just left the car.  Not much was seeen of it for a year or so.  Then  a  local RV salesman met with Ed's aquaintence and they became friends.   The RV salesman had a terrific idea.  Make a collapsible roof camper out of that old hearse.  To all of our unending suprise Ed took to the idea right away.

Over the course of  three or four days about a half ton of hardware was gutted from the henney body.  There was a monster hyraulic system , and iron bed structure , and hundreds of dollars worth of bronze casting removed.  The latter was kept and sold to  local foundry.  Such infidels to hearse and ambulance lovers or anyone with an appreciation of 1930's history for that matter.

The next thing to go was the roof.  This was to be repalced with a custom made crank up collapsable top that would allow you to stand up inside.  When the roof came off.  The remaining structure collapsed .  the door posts disintegrated and things started breaking.   Ed  and Ray were left with a slight sort of mess.  There was need at this point to retrench a bit and review options.  After cleaning up the site of the collapse Ed decided to get the thing started  and see "what he had".   He had Dad come back over and help and as usual I came along as Barney Rubble.

It turned out to be a memoble Wednesday night.  Dad had got the fuel pump rebuilt.  Ed had the rad recored.  The carb was given a kit right there in Ed's garage.  The rebuild was strictly utilitarian.   It started.  It ran.  It had no exauhst system.
Old   Mr. Klausmeyer was very particular about how the Pierce 8 was the quietest engine ever built, but this thing sounded like a Lanchester bomber at takeoff.  Ed shut it down, did a few adjustment or some such thing and then gave it another try.

He was priming the carb with an oil can full of gas when the car backfired and set the whole can on fire a well as Ed's hand.  He paniced and I remember the feeling of horror as everything went out of control.  He threw the oil can down and wrapped his burning hand in a rag.  The can rolled under the car and continued to burn.    The remaining rotten wood in the remaining body structure started to kindle and the rest of he night isn't worth recounting.   In the end the fire was put out.  The garage did not burn and the Pierce did not suffer much more damage than had already been inflicted upon it.  But that marked the end of any involvement Eddy Forest had with the Pierce Arrow.  He covered it up and never talked about it again.

Meanwhile my fascination with the car was kindled.  It had all the markings of a total lost cause by now.   I was a  student away in my final year of university at that time but somehow I kept getting visions of  what might be done wit that Pierce chassis that Ed still had.   Someday,  maybe,  ... who knows.

I had my Packard and dad and I had resoted several cars together.  When I  get going maybe Ed would part with the Pierce for a song.....

In 1983 Ed was diagnosed with cancer and the end came very quick.    His widow wanted me to have the old earse since I was the only one that showed and interest in it.   The terms of "sale"  were more than what  I could have hoped for.   I  towed the thing out and deposited it in one of dad's storage garages.  There it stayed  until 1998.

I had on several occasions come accross the  articles of Hugo Pfau and others in old car magazines.  These guys recounted stories of how Derham, Waterhouse, Dietrich, Murphy etc. built custom  bodies in the 1930's.   They were fascinating stories and I was continually  impressed  with how simple the whole proceedure was.  Really all it took was  an eye for classic line  conventions and knowledge , skill and technique.    I had  visited the works of some rare Canadian restorers;  panel beaters who later opened up some first class restoration shops in southern  Ontario.   A certain Mr Colin Bennet was actually a panel beater at Rolls Royce in the sixties he had his ticket in the trade and was running quite a shop.  I was inspired.  I wanted to create something legit.  I reasoned that to put a body from one car onto another is just faking it anyway.  To build an exact replica of a body and put it on a car is legitimate as long as it is represented as such.  If the method of construction , techniques, process and design are exactly as they would have been in the era of the car's construction, then the car had to be respected as such.  with that as a premise, I resolved to build a body.  And the first design came about in 1984.  Its  best not to talk about it however since the results would have ended up much as Eddy Forest's attempts.

Here's my final Design from 1987

By 1987 I had come up with some full size draftings I what I wanted.  In truth the design is based on an Erdman and Rossi Bentley from 1936.  In Rupert Stuhlemmer's book there are several photos, descriptions layouts and build sheets for  the cars built in Germany.  The Bentley is the inspiration and seems to fit my vision well

. In the summer of 1998 we had just completed the restoration of the L-29 Cord.  It was time to begin.  By 1999  I had all the details tacked down and the ash frame  on the chassis. In the summer of that year we had just completed the restoration of the L-29 Cord.  It was time to begin.  By 1999  I had all the details tacked down and the ash frame  on the chassis.

AND NOW THE LINK TO THE PICTURES OF IT IN SUMMER 2001
 
 

 
A note for you guys in the TMJ class  (that's how)

I started teaching school part time, and working in   the family business; a body shop no less..    I took a major detour at this point and decided to get my machinist's certification.  It took three years and a job in a machine shop but I recirved my certifcation. This always goes well with a history/languages major.  Shortly after I landed a job as a tech teacher in metalworking at a relatively large high school. TDSS. This put  two complete woodshops, a machine shop, a sheet metal shop, and a foundry at my disposal.  For the last twelve years this has been somewhat of a convenience to my Pierce rebody project.  What tools I don't have can be made by eager students.   (right Dave!!)

So What are you going to call it ? as Travis says

Tiffany's, the jeweler , made a type of glassware in the twenties.  They called it "Favril ".   Its an old Norman French word that means  "made by hand"   Its a  Favril  Victoria Kabriolet (so ist das auf deutsch). That is the name of the coach builder. Cus  I says so.
 
 
 

Oh,  so you're bored and Palangio's off yackin on his high horse again.  Fine .  I'll quit.  I'll quit right now.  I won't write another thing.  I don't have to be told twice to stop writing.     But  let me just add here.  No really  just let me say.  Folks please!!!   Hey  quiet!!!   Over here !   See here !!!
Things are going well even though I can only get down to the shop two days a week to do the heavy stuff.
She's just about done  as far as construction goes.
When were done she'll be quite the thing.  Yep.
 If I had some help here maybe.