Monday Mystery: a large American tourer on a cobbled London street

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We have recently received correspondence from Andrew Bradshaw, who tells us:

Last year, when sorting out my late father's effects, Tim Gunn of The Old Bicycle Company was very helpful in identifying various early motoring items, some of which he purchased from me, including a quantity of books, most of which had not had the pages turned for many years. Some months later, Tim sent me a cryptic email saying that he would be sending back 'something' he had found inside one of the books.

It turned out to be a photograph of three people and a note suggesting they were a long-forgotten branch of my family; the exact relationship I am yet to establish. It would be interesting to know the make and year of the car. Tim thought possibly an American manufacturer. The note included a central London address which we have looked at on Google Earth.

It's an interesting puzzle to get stuck into. We would agree with Tim Gunn's assessment that it's an American car, but we might go one further and suggest that it's nothing less than a Stanley steamer. The black-painted radiator, wooden artillery wheels and rather large chassis are all as we would expect from an American car of the early 1920s and, unusual though it undoubtedly would have been in London, the shape of the radiator resembles that of a Stanley.

We say 'radiator'. Of course, in the years after the Kaiser War, Stanley had adopted the practice of fitting false radiators in front of its cars' boilers in order to make them appear more conventional and acceptable to conformist consumer tastes. Despite that, Stanley struggled in the 1920s and ceased car manufacture in 1925. Certain details, like the shape of the bonnet and louvres, make us doubt ourselves, but there's one more thing which points towards Stanley; a close look at the wheel nuts appears to show a large 'S' cast into them.

What do you think? Are we onto something, or barking up entirely the wrong tree? Let us know in the comments below...

Words: Zack Stiling

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