To the Grand Central Palace, Manhattan, each day last week flocked hundreds of businessmen, clerks, sports, idlers, professional men, New Yorkers, out-of-towners, taxi drivers, foreigners and not a few thugmen, national and international celebrities, blackamoors and sailors, some with their ladies, some in groups, most of them talking animatedly, all of them peering, prying, pushing and querying, and some of them buying.
Automobiles had attracted them. The following makes were exhibited:
Auburn Davis Erskine Cadillac Diana Essex Buick Dodge Flint Chandler Duesenberg Franklin Chevrolet Du Pont Gardner Chrysler Elcar Hudson Hupmobile Oakland Star Jordan Oldsmobile Steams-Knight Kissel Packard Studebaker Lincoln Paige Stutz Locomobile Peerless Velie McFarlan Pierce-Arrow Whippet Marmon Pontiac Wills-Ste. Claire Moon Reo Willys-Knight Nash Rickenbacker
The following trucks:
Atterbury General Motors Selden
Autocar Graham Star
Chevrolet Larrabee Stewart
Commercial Oakland Yellow Knight
Cunningham Reo Walker
Federal Republic Ward
Garford Schacht
The following taxicabs:
Dodge Bros. Hertz
Oakland Yellow
People who came to see Fords or Cunninghams (pleasure cars) were disappointed. For reasons peculiar to their manufacturers these two were not displayed. Nor were displayed some of the heavier motor trucks—White, Mack, International, Pierce-Arrow, Diamond T.* Those in the jostling throng who could read had seen in the daily press the following figures relative to 1926 U. S. motor car production:
Total Production 4,480000
Passenger cars 3,950,000
Motor trucks 530,000
Production of closed cars 2,926,000
Per cent, closed cars 74
And the following figures relative to 1926 motor car registration:
Motor vehicles in U. S 22,330,000 Passenger cars (State reports)...19,520,000 Motor trucks (State reports) 2,810,000 World registration of motor vehicles 27,500,000 Per cent of world registration in the U.S. 81
Those of the throng who knew aught of motors and who were able to push near enough to the cars to see, sensed at once that the Show held nothing new (of importance) from an engineering standpoint Certain cars, it is true, had effected minor improvements: additional bearings to the crank shaft (Dodge); rubber cushioning of engines (Buick); adding of a fourth speed (Paige); crankcase ventilation (Oldsmobile). But all of these features have been used before.
Progress in lighting was evident. Oldsmobile and Oakland had added the tilt-ray control, already used by Cadillac; and McFarlan showed the Ryan head lamp which gives an unusually diffused light, including a strong sidewise light which makes the spot light unnecessary.
Conspicuous among the new body lines were those of Hudson-Essex which have eliminated the angles on hood and radiator; on the Reo Flying Cloud which is a lower hung and much "snappier" revision of previous Reos; in Stutz which exhibited a fabric body.