Great Garages: The Wheels of Time

William Edgar

04/01/2006

Pierce-Arrow is a name that haunts me. I was far too young then to recall, now, the rumble of its mighty straight-eight–I can only imagine what it was like riding from Ohio to California while my father piloted our open Model 54 touring car over those coarse roads of the mid-1930s. My dad, John Edgar, who drove a Mercer Raceabout and rode a Henderson Four, cherished the thrill and beauty of transport. “There’s art in going places,” he said decades later while campaigning sports-racing Ferraris, Maseratis, and Porsches. That art lives on in the machines themselves, and their modern display cases are museums.

In a nondescript industrial park in Oxnard, Calif., Otis Chandler’s Vintage Museum creates a time warp. Besides Pierce-Arrow’s LeBaron convertible, there are dozens of classic and antique cars, plus scores of historic motorcycles, with which your imagination may travel the past century.

It is raining the day I arrive at “The Vintage,” greeted by Otis Chandler, the former Los Angeles Times news­paper publisher, current museum president, and erudite father of the collection. Chandler has been in love with cars and motorcycles all his adult life. “I’m here every day,” he says. “This is my office.”
 
Duesenberg’s LeBaron body epitomized panache in American coachwork. LeBaron founders Richard Dietrich and Thomas Hibbard called these creations “automotive architecture.” (Click image to enlarge)

Open to the public just three times a year, the museum often hosts private gatherings of car and motorcycle enthusiasts and a variety of charity fund-raisers. On the day I visit, there is no one else in its vast gallery of nearly 50,000 square feet. I think of myself in the Pierce-Arrow again as the world flickers by along Route 66. I walk about, imagining the sound of engines roaring into full power on a rutted road, the smell of half-burned gasoline, with the ground shaking when a massive “brass car” lumbers by. I imagine the hoarse voices of men at the wheel, the high nervous laughter of women, silk scarves holding their hats tight, the yip of dogs following, and boys chasing after them whacking balloon tires with sticks.

The next vehicles carry me deeper into the past, and my imagination. Riding a 1.5 hp bike such as the museum’s 1903 California, I might be the intrepid George Wyman, first to traverse the United States using a motorized vehicle. Or, steering the bars of a three-wheel Minneapolis, I could be delivering the holiday goose to a cheery grandmother surrounded by family. Cracking the throttle of a 1910 Pierce, I’m a sporty chap riding one of the first 4-cylinder motorcycles along a country road, wary of farm animals crossing my path. Then I leap years ahead when I spy Kenny Roberts’ torrid 4-cylinder Yamaha 2-stroker, which is far beyond my skills. Steve McQueen’s 40 cu in Cleveland Fowler Four sizzles beneath the lights. In a 1909 Vindec Twin, I imagine taking my sweetie to the fair in a wicker sidecar. I envision grasping the wide wooden steering wheel of the ’26 McFarlan and then jumping into another 6-cylinder open car–the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster on display–as I sample the times of Fellini’s dolce vita. (Click image to enlarge)

Harley-Davidson’s 1907 Strap Tank Single featured leather belt direct drive. This pristine paradigm once turned heads and thrilled riders, giving rise to an American motorcycle industry that would build the Cleveland Four and the Harley Knucklehead. (Click image to enlarge)

I picture the flame of a match bringing life to an acetylene-fueled brass lamp on a 1904 Locomobile. “That, and a full moon,” says a museum technician, “might be enough to drive this car at night.” And drive he does, all of the cars here–but only in daylight. The vehicles are regularly “exercised” on a road loop around Oxnard. “When people see these cars,” the technician says, chuckling, “they steer clear of them. In case something goes awry, you have to plot where you’re going to go.”

Next, I find myself spirited into a Pebble Beach front-running Duesenberg LeBaron Special Phaeton, arriving at a movie premiere in the 1930s, searchlights sweeping the clouds, fans crying for autographs. In another reverie, the ’07 Grand Prix car, which “Willie K” Vanderbilt commissioned Renault to produce, hurls me and my riding mechanic at an unheard-of 85 mph.

Otis Chandler’s muscle car collection was once legendary. “I have a few legitimate muscle cars left,” Chandler says. “My tastes change through the years.” Despite his fluctuating preferences, Chandler considers all cars timeless creations. “Cars are works of beauty, moving sculpture. I’m an art collector.” (Click image to enlarge)

Granted, this art does not hang on a wall, though each vehicle is framed in the context of its past. The two-seat 1913 Pope-Hartford roadster–striking in its livery of orange and black with wood-spoked wheels–is the only remaining 6-cylinder Model 29 in existence. Next to that, the 1911 Simplex double-chain drive touring car is one of only four in the world. Lozier’s ghostly gray 1909 Briarcliff model has survived the battery of Glidden Tours and two transcontinental Great American Races. In the realm of antique luxury touring cars, so high on 27-inch wheels, the 1911 Mercedes 38/70 is powered by a gargantuan 9.8-liter 4-cylinder engine. This German example, its passengers in frocks and flying feathers, might have graced the avenues of Berlin and Paris when Nijinsky still danced. (Click image to enlarge)

The later cars, the classics, evoke more reckless lives that dash through pages of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, presenting incongruous counterpoint to the financial throes of the Great Depression. What is more extravagant than the rake of a massive ’31 Duesenberg or the kingly air of Packard’s ’34 Dietrich-bodied coupe? Or, say, the lush richness of the ’30 Stutz Speedster Phaeton’s red leather cockpit, where its driver is guaranteed 100 mph from the dual overhead camshaft inline eight? Or again, Pierce-Arrow’s 1933 convertible sedan, a V-12 of spectacular horsepower, so exceptional that only four were ever made? Cadillac, Marmon, Lincoln. Like Garbo and Lombard, Gable and Astaire, they are jewels from an era of loss and deficit. (Click image to enlarge)

On the museum’s mezzanine, motorcycles, like birds nesting above boulevards, stand on two–occasionally three–wheels. As I ascend the stairs to this motorized aviary, what steals my attention is a white, rubber-tired Strap Tank Harley-Davidson of such pristine beauty in fit and finish that I hardly notice its lovely leather belt drive. Two hundred of these were manufactured in 1907, the same year that dirigibles raced in the James Gordon Bennett cup from St. Louis to Asbury Park on the Jersey shore, and Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet of battle­wagons steamed the seven seas. Motorcycles were coming into their own on city streets and some of our less ruinous rural roads. Among these newborn machines were the Flying Merkel, the Marvel Curtiss, and others from Indian, Flanders, Thor, and Alligator. Numerous examples of the finest American and foreign-made motorcycles reside here.

Mercer’s Raceabout could reach 100 mph. Ralph de Palma was victorious in one at the 1912 Santa Monica Road Races. (Click image to enlarge)

“As I get older,” says Chandler, “and as much as I love the cars of the ’30s, I’m more and more turning to the pre-1916 motorcycles that I never was around for.”

Chandler rode on a Harley-Davidson Knucklehead as his sole means of transportation while he was a student at Stanford University. An earlier model of Chandler’s dearly loved school ride, a 61-inch 1936 Model E Knucklehead, is prominently displayed under a mezzanine spotlight against Keith Collins’ tapestry depicting bygone days of board-track racing. Nearby, a “Small Tank” ’39 Crocker, which once belonged to Bill Harrah, gleams under the lights. And who can help but take at least part of that notorious ride with T.E. Lawrence while standing here before a Brough Superior? In so many ways, the Vintage Museum envelops its guests and makes the experience memorable.

“Life doesn’t stop,” Chandler tells me, “it keeps going.” He smiles at the sentiment, but he means it–he believes in zeal, lives for it. “Be involved!” he says. “Get a passion!”

It’s still raining when I say goodnight to Chandler and his wife, Bettina. The day has spanned decades. I’ve traveled to hundreds of places on as many cars and motorcycles from this Vintage Museum of Transportation and Wildlife. I’ll hold its essence for months to come–until I find myself back to ponder the art in going places.

Chandler Wheels Enterprises
805.486.5929
www.chandlerwheels.com/autos