Newport Rhode Island's Audrain Automobile Museum

Newport, Rhode Island is a town that became quite ritzy during the late 1800s and continued in that vein through the 1930s.  Its southeastern coast contains many mansions built for the hyper-wealthy of those times.  1930s America's Cup sailing races were held in nearby waters.

Today Newport is more of a tourist attraction, and one attraction for car fans is the small Audrain Automobile Museum that's named for the building where it's housed.

When I visited in early June, the exhibit combined cars with women's fashions of the same years. This was much like what I saw a few years ago at the Museo Automovilistico y de la Moda in Málaga, Spain (my post dealing with it is here).

About half the floorspace was devoted to pre-1927 automobiles that I seldom write about.  Below are some iPhone photos I took of 1930-1941 cars on display.

Due to its small size, the museum isn't likely to be worth a special trip for folks living more than a couple of hundred miles away.  But if you happen to be in Newport, it's worth an hour or so of your time.

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1938 Ford by Brewster (owned by Harold Stirling Vanderbilt)
An unlikely basis for a customized body.  Perhaps Vanderbilt simply used the car as a Newport area runabout.  Or maybe he liked custom details but felt a Ford would seem less ostentatious than a customized Packard during the Great Depression years.

Side view.  The side quarter windows are covered over by the vinyl-like top.  Otherwise the exterior is largely 1938 Ford DeLuxe Fordor.

1941 Cadillac 67 Fleetwood Limousine (owned by Countess Széchényi - Gladys Vanderbilt)
This car seems to be essentially stock.

1938 Packard Twelve Landaulet by Rollston (owned by Doris Duke)
Made the year Rollston went out of business.

Interior view.  Note the window crank and instruments on the back of the chauffeur's compartment.

1930 Duesenberg Model J Town Cabriolet by Murphy (owned by Nanaline Holt Inman Duke)
Murphy was based in Pasadena, California and catered to the Hollywood set.

Rear quarter view with fashion item.  That's the Packard in the background.

1936 Auburn 852 Speedster
I failed to take a photo of the information plaque, so am not certain this is a 1936 model.  Nor do I know if it was owned by anyone famous.

Nevertheless, it's a fine example of a classic design.

In the background is the 1938 Ford.  Its backlight windows seem to be stock, not customized.

The Speedster's cockpit.

Auburn, Cord Design Studio Displays

If any of you find yourself in the southern Michigan, northwest Ohio, northern Indiana area, I highly recommend visiting the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum in Auburn, Indiana.

A small part of the large facility is devoted to the Auburn styling section.  One display is devoted to Alan Leamy, a talented stylist who designed the distinctive 1929 L-29 Cord front end as well as many Auburns.  He also might have had a hand in designing the Duesenberg J, though the detailed link states that this is uncertain.

Another room shows the clay modeling technique promoted by famed stylist Gordon Buehrig, best known for designing the classic 1936 Cord 810 series.  Included is his drafting set.

Below are some photos I took in September 2019: click on them to enlarge.

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Photo of Al Leamy at his drafting board.

Scanning to the left of the recreated Leamy studio.  Assistants would work here.

Peering past his name.

Drawing board to the right, desk to the left.  Not the same board as in the photo, but perhaps from his era.  Examples of his work are on the foreground display table.  Elsewhere are some of his drawings.

Gordon Buehrig.

Clay scale model 810 Cords.  These are probably recreations for display purposes -- correct me if I'm wrong.

Buehrig was an early proponent of the styling bridge that allowed surface measurements to be taken.  This setup, including the clay-on-armature model, is almost surely a reconstruction of an original.

However, I'll admit that the platform and bridge do look old and might have been preserved by Buehrig for later, personal use.

More models in display cases.  The setup in the foreground is of a Cord 810 Westchester sedan.

Stout Scarab in South Bend

Sources such as this hold that nine Stout Scarabs were built, five of which survive.  Its creator, William B. Stout (1880-1956), was an engineer active in both the automotive and aviation fields.  Perhaps his best known work was an airplane that evolved into the famous Ford Trimotor transport.

By the mid-1930s Stout was back into automobile work, creating the Scarab -- what some consider the precursor of the minivan.  Sources on the Internet mention that the Scarabs were essentially custom-built, no two being identical.  They might be regarded as a more practical form of Buckminster Fuller's three-wheel Dymaxion car of 1933.

A 1935 Scarab can be found in the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana where I recently took the color photos shown below.

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A poor-quality image of the first Scarab from 1934.

Interior view of that car.

Probably the 1935 Scarab shown in the museum.

Stout, at left, discussing a 1936 Scarab at a filling station.

There was a 1946 Scarab, shown here with Stout.

1935 Stout Scarab as seen in the museum, September, 2019.  This unrestored car was owned by Wrigley chewing gum family of Chicago.

Front quarter view.  The license plate letters refer to Philip K. Wrigley.  Note the strongly raked (in plan view) windshield.

Rear quarter view.  This Scarab was covered with fashionable 1930s parallel "speed lines."  I find this aspect of the car the most interesting and best looking -- though not beautiful.  The talon shape in white on the 1934 car is echoed here via sculpting.

Where to View the Packard Predictor Concept Car

One of my favorite concept cars of the 1950s was the Packard Predictor that I wrote about here.  In that post I mentioned that:

"For me, the most frustrating aspect of the Predictor is that something like it might have revived the Packard brand in the luxury market. That's because it was an example of a restrained 1950s style, unlike the direction Cadillac, Lincoln and Imperial took over the next few years."

I also noted that the Packard brand was dying at the time.  Had the firm been in better financial shape, perhaps something like the Predictor might have emerged to keep matters going for a few more years.

The Predictor still exists, and can be found in the Studebaker National Museum in South Bend, Indiana where I saw as long ago as 2008.

To give those of you who haven't visited the museum and viewed the Predictor a sense of the place, some photos I took are below.  Click on the images to enlarge.

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Publicity photo from 1956.

And photos I took September 2019 at the museum.  The gray automobile in the background is the 1934 Bendix SWC experimental car.

The Nethercutt Collection

It seems I only saw some of the cars on view when I visited the Nethercutt Collection in Sylmar, California recently (links here and here.)  I simply took in the museum part and failed to opt for the guided tour of the "Collection" segment that featured super-classic cars.  Will correct that error next time I'm in southern California.

One surprising feature of the Nethercutt is that admission is free!

The cars on display when I visited were mostly American, and from the 1920s and 1930s.  There was a row or two of antiques (which don't interest me because there are from before the professional styling era) along with a few post- World War 2 examples.  That suited me because the 1930s interest me greatly.

Posts from time to time will include photos I took at the Nethercutt.  For now, I feature an atypical example seen near the museum entrance, a 1931Type 51 Bugatti that was re-bodied by the Louis Dubos firm in 1936 when the Type 57SC Atlantic was Bugatti's most stylish design and which must have served as inspiration for the car on view.

Click on the images below to enlarge.

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The Information plaque.

Small Alfa Romeo Styling Models

In mid-May I visited the Alfa Romeo museum (link here) in Arese, a suburb northwest of Milan where Alfas formerly were built.

One of the displays was of small-scale styling models dating back to apparently around 1950.  These were proposals for factory-built cars, and not for bodies supplied by carrozzeria, as best I can tell.  (Alfa maven readers are encouraged to correct me or provide more details in comments, as my Alfa Romeo knowledge is on the thin side.)

Below are some photos I took.

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General view of the display.  Photos below mostly deal with items to the left of the spectator.

Extreme left side of the display, presumably the earliest examples.

The model at the upper left appears to be the Alfa Romeo 1900 under development about 1949.  A prototype with the same grille design appeared in 1950.  The six-window sedan design never saw prototype or production.

The same set of models as seen from the rear.

The dark blue model in the upper level might be of the Giulia sedan that was launched in 1955.  As best I can tell, none of the other prospects advanced beyond the model stage.

More still-born concepts, perhaps from the 1960s.

Some Italian Automobile Museums: Overviews

I recently returned from Italy, where I was able to visit three automobile museums.  Some future posts might include photos I took there.  But the present post simply offers a few of my impressions for your consideration if you might think of visiting one or another of them in the future.

Ferrari Museum

The Ferrari museum, website here, is off the beaten tourist track, being located by the factory at the edge of Maranello, itself a few miles from Modena and the nearest autostrada.

Disclosure: I am not a Ferrari fan.  Never was, though I like the styling of a number of the road cars from the late 1940s to the very early 1960s.  And it was some of those cars I had hoped to view at the museum.

Alas!  The museum is virtually free of examples from before the mid-1960s, Formula 1 racers excepted (but still not many of the early ones).  Why is this so?  My hypothesis is that Ferrari kept many of its racing cars, which is why there are plentiful examples from over the decades.  But the firm made few road cars during the early years, all with carrozzeria-furnished bodies, and apparently all were eventually sold.  (For example, "Inter" series Ferraris totaled only 143 units.)  Such that survive are worth a lot of money that the museum apparently did not want to spend on its collection, hence their absence.

The museum shop is well stocked with items for fans, however.

National (Torino) Museum

The Museo Nazionale dell'Automobile in Turin (link here), is located about two miles from the central train station.  From there you can catch the subway that gets you to about a ten minute walk from the building.

The collection is largely arranged chronologically.  The cars are displayed in overly-elaborate (in my opinion) settings with dramatic lighting, background photomurals, and such.  All that display jazz represents the fashion seen all too often in recent years, and the cars themselves are overwhelmed.  Moreover, the atmosphere is dark, so to avoid using flash, I used my iPhone rather than my compact Nikon to take pictures.

Even though the museum is located a few blocks from the old Fiat factory, the cars on display were not strongly Fiat-oriented.  Most examples were Italian, though there were a few American, German and British cars along with a Russian Pobeda from 1957.

Alfa Romeo Museum

The Alfa Romeo museum was the most satisfactory of the three, in my judgment.  Its main problem is its location, out in the Milan suburb of Arese.  Getting there by car is no problem, as it is close to the A8 autostrada.  From central Milan you might take a taxi, but that option is costly.  I followed the instructions from the museum's web site and took the subway and then a bus to get there.  The bus runs only once an hour or so, which makes timing a planning factor.

Only one display -- racing cars -- was annoyingly jazzy.  Plenty of noise, and illumination that cycled low to high and back, making photography difficult.

Car selection was good from about 1938 onward, though there were a few examples from before.  Vehicles were spaced far enough apart that one could photograph them from most angles.  Besides a museum shop, there were a coffee shop/restaurant and a showroom displaying current models.  (I skipped these last two because I wanted to catch a bus in time to get me back into Milan so as to do other touristy things.)

Málaga's Fine Automobile Museum

The Museo Automovilistico y de la Moda in Málaga, Spain is surprisingly good, being based on the collection of the Portuguese João Manuel Magalhães.

I was in Málaga in November while on a Mediterranean cruise and running out of things to see within walking distance of the cruise port.  I knew there was a car museum in town, but it was located about two miles from city center, and getting there required taking a taxi or a bus.  Would seeing it be worth the transportation trouble?  Since the same collection of buildings (a former tobacco processing factory) also housed a branch of St. Petersburg's Russian Museum, I decided that being able to kill two museum birds with one travel stone would be worthwhile.

The car museum's web page is here.  Note that it features period women's fashions as well as cars.  I suppose one reason for combining the two subjects was for wives of visiting car guys to be entertained as well.  Another justification for this pairing is that, especially in 1930s France, there were automobile concours featuring cars along with very well-dressed society women.

Below are some of the photos I took of the large collection.  I hope they give you a sense of what was on view.

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Museum Entrance

1930 Nash 400
Setting the scene: This car has a custom body, something unusual for Nash.   Note the women's clothing displays featuring fashion from about the same period as the car.  The automobile in the background is a 1931 Studebaker FD Commander.

1952 Aston Martin DB2
Behind is a 1952 Jaguar XK120 Coupé.

1936 Auburn 851
The famous last-of-its-kind boat-tail Auburn.  The background car is a 1927 Belgian FN (Fabrique Nationale) 1300 S.

1928 Ballot Model 2LT
The collection includes examples of seldom-seen brands such as this.  Behind it is a Lancia limousene.

1934 DeSoto Airflow
Yet another rare automobile, though I doubt this car left the factory with that color.  In the background is a 1937 Cord 812 Cabriolet.

1934 Lancia Dilambda
Body by Pinin Farina.  Behind is a 1930 Pierce-Arrow 143 rumble seat convertible coupe.

1927 Paige
Another brand seldom seen in car museums.

1938 Panhard et Levassor X77 Dynamic
This coupé strikes me as being pretty rare.  I am not sure if its paint colors are original.

1937 Peugeot 402 Eclipse
Peugeot marketed retractable metal-top cars in the late '30s.