Museo Stradale

Dominic's Auto Museum
One man's passionate quest to survey finest motorcars in the world

#0025 - Pierce-Arrow Model 80 Sedan, 1927

Photographed: Radnor Hunt Concours d'Elegance, 2007. Owner: Raymond H. Carr

Discovering a Practical Apogee: The Model 80 was created as counterpoint to the company's long standing dual-valve T-head motor, being fitted with a more conventional single-valve L-head 6-cylinder. In the end it became Pierce-Arrow's most popular model ever, selling over 16,000 units between 1924 and 1927. This much signaled success of the sort Pierce-Arrow always needed but, through the twenties and thirties, seldom achieved. The engineering superiority of the cars that surrounded the Model 80 never brought great profits, and as the luxury market atrophied the company was duly squeezed out of existence.

Thus, while the unassuming Model 80 is no piece for comparison to contemporary greats, it represents all of the company's commercial success as a mature automobile manufacturer. The company produced more impressive cars before the Model 80, and went on to greater heights thereafter, but since no such effort was ever so well rewarded in the free market, we must look at the Model 80 as the turning point. This was the best consumer product Pierce-Arrow devised. From here on the history reads as an unfortunate chronology of disappointment.

No Longer in the Teens: At this point we must comment that the advances in build and design that defined the Pierce-Arrow brand in the early days did not spell sufficient momentum as the market expanded and diversified. Part of the flagging steam the company experienced occured because of their decision to pin reputation on tradition. Among the budding luxury manufacturers, Pierce-Arrow were perhaps the most conservative in terms of pressing for newer, bigger motors, and in terms of pressing for newer body designs that adopted emerging trends. By the time the Silver Arrow show car appeared—a design I feel is the superlative automotive design to come from America in the classic era—it was not only too little, too late, but impossibly expensive to implement on a commercial level.

From their inception, Pierce-Arrow were successful by taking good engineering into the realm of perfection. Progress often meant small changes to already robust technical aspects, such as the refinement of valves, a crankshaft, or brakes. But heading into the classic era, changes in the auto industry were coming on in comparatively giant steps, and they were happening at a faster rate than Pierce-Arrow's typical cycle of three to four years. The company could not compete with Cadillac and Packard on the basis of tradition, not when the competition were so grand in visual comparison, endowed with a wider range of powerplants, and diversified with a selection of cars that reached multiple segments of the market.

Morphology: The shape of antique cars is often indistinct. Apart from the dynamism of brass era cars, antiques were about mass-production and ubiquity. In other words, a sedan was a sedan regardless of the manufacturer. In the case of our Pierce-Arrow Model 80—this one produced in the final year for the model—the notable visual feature that endears the car to its brand is a headlamp set integrated into the skirts. This feature debuted in 1913 and, according to the tradition mantra espoused by the company, remained the sole aspect of visual identity for Pierce-Arrow cars—that is, apart from their American austerity.

In 1927, designers should have been thinking about how to take the automotive concept to another level—personalization, branding, color, and artistry will burst open in the classic era. But it was company policy that Pierce-Arrow not chance disrupting the staid reputation of quality they'd established. As a result, Pierce-Arrow cars are often archetypical, as in this case. What appears is a straight sedan, and the form will not change much over the next few years.

Sources:

Automobile Quarterly's World of Cars, Automobile Quarterly, Inc., New York, New York, 1971, Pierce-Arrow: The American Aristocrat, page 213; adapted from the edition of the same name by Maurice D. Hendry

Radnor Hunt Concours d'Elegance: In 2007, the concours featured Pierce-Arrow, with a particularly lovely selection of veteran cars, representing the company's strongest days.

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