Auburn, Reo, Franklin and Pierce Arrow versus Cadillac, Chrysler, Lincoln and Packard

LAST COPY AVAILABLE !!! BRAND NEW. Author: Brooks T. Brierley, Hardbound, 159 Pages, ISBN: 0961579110, 9780961579111, 1st Edition, 1991

E. L. Cord's 1934 plan to merge the remaining independent luxury car manufacturers—Auburn, Reo, Franklin and Pierce-Arrow—to better compete against the four Detroit luxury cars—Cadillac, Chrysler Imperial, Lincoln and Packard—recalls the apogee of the American luxury automobile in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

They were very special automobiles—the best ever built in the United States.

Here is a new photograph collection of them when new, shown in both formal factory publicity form and in period scenes illustrating their use: Auburns in Bahia and the Casper, Wyoming winter a Packard coachbuilt in Danzig, a Cadillac 16,000 feet high in the Bolivian Andes, a Peerless on the streets of Havana. A coachbuilder's pencil sketch reveals the most spectacular Duesenberg was designed but never built.

Margaret Bourke-White's photograph studies for Pierce-Arrow remain one of the most intriguing shoots of automobiles. And there is a stunning Lincoln sedan with trim designed to mimic the curve of a monkey's tail.

All the photographs and illustrations are single page, reproduced in 300-line photographic screen printing to preserve the clarity and sharpness characteristic of that era's silver nitrate photography.