Motor Cars For the Soldier and the Civilian

Some New Wrinkles in Design for Windows, Tops and Bodies

ALTHOUGH the "dog days" are still offidally with us and the mercury is a reminder that official designations of weather are sometimes correct, the eye of the motorist is noticeably turning toward the closed or closable form of car. In this he is not looking solely with forethought into the future when the crisp days of Autumn shall have come; he is also showing that experience has been a good teacher and that the partly closed car is really more comfortable for warm as well as for cool weather than the completely open or topless one. There can be little doubt, when the experiment has once been tried, that the shelter of a top — preferably a permanent or rigid top —is quite as welcome as a protection from the mid-summer sun as it is to ward off cold or rain. This is undoubtedly the explanation for the success of the sedan body and other types like it and for the fast-growing proportionate number of these bodies which are seen upon the road. It has been the history of American motoring that once a body style or a new feature in construction has received the stamp of popular approval its improvement and refinement has gone on at a pace little short of miraculous. In few fields have the inventive faculties of the American manufacturer been demonstrated so fully as in that of motor car construction. A new form of cowl, a novel utilization of luggage space, a better way of handling the superstructure has only to appear and receive some degree of public recognition as meritorious to find itself, almost overnight, the accepted part of a majority of new cars and to be still further improved and modified and expanded in countless ingenious ways. In no previous season has this characteristic been more marked than in the present one. A dozen more or less important details of body construction and fitting are among the features of the new models.

SOME of the more interesting of these developments are the subject of illustration in this issue. There is, for example, the use of the touring sedan type of body combined with a collapsible top of the self-acting variety. In this body, which is mounted on an eightcylinder chassis of great capabilities, most of the possible contingencies of motoring can be met with the calm assurance which is part of the joy of the game. Its capabilities of adjustment are so great that it is fit to meet nearly all the possible conditions of weather. It can be thrown open completely to the form of a touring car with permanent windshield or it can be completely closed, becoming, for the nonce, quite as snug and weather-proof as the most elaborately glassenclosed limousine.

BETWEEN these two extremes there are many gradations of airiness which one can secure with a minimum of effort and complication. Another of the illustrations shows a brougham or town car type which has a somewhat similar chameleon-like character. It is shown with the roof thrown back, but the front window and the windows in the doors raised so that the passengers are at once sheltered from direct winds and out in the air, as it were. This is a peculiarly happy arrangement on many days in the Autumn when one wants the benefit of the sun and the still delightful air without the chill of the direct wind, greatly augmented in force as it always is by the velocity of the car itself. It is a type of body which exemplifies the degree to which the designers of motor cars have become sensitive to the real needs of those who are to use them. It is one of the types that mark the transition from the era in which bodies were made chiefly in such a way as to make manufacture easy, to the present period in which the designer and manufacturer has become the master of his medium and is in a position to produce the body which will exactly meet the true requirements of the tour over winding country roads and the exigencies of the traffic-filled city streets and avenues.

STILL another of the modifications of what might be called for want of a better name "window arrangements" is found in a new touring sedan. This is a removable partition, with glass at the top, of course, between the passenger compartment and the driving compartment. This simple expedient really makes many cars out of this single body. With the partition in place the car at once becomes a Berline-limousine, a type which has as one of its definitions the separation of the driver from the persons whom he is to drive. In this form it is a chauffeur-driven car. With the partition out, however, the entire interior of the car, from windshield to rear window, becomes one compartment. It is a true sedan in which the driver and his friends are as much together as if they were seated in the same room and are quite without any sense of separation. The car is intended for use in this form, of course, whenever the owner elects to do the driving himself. It is not difficult to imagine the greatly extended usefulness of a car fitted with a dual purpose body such as this. With but a few moments' work it may be transformed from the car in which one takes a party of friends for a tour to the car in which one is driven to business or the shops or the theatre.

THERE are really five different types of car contained in this one body. The Berlinelimousine and the true sedan have already been mentioned. But when the side windows are lowered and the partition removed, the car becomes an open touring car with a permanent roof. By leaving the partition in and dropping the windows at the sides of the front seat, the conventional town limousine type is attained, and by replacing the glass partition and lowering all the side windows, the car becomes, practically speaking, a touring car with a rear seat windshield which not only protects the passenger compartment but separates it from the driving compartment. This body is perhaps the most versatile that has yet been brought out. It has four doors, in addition to its other advantages, so that there is never need for climbing over other passengers to get in or out of either compartment.

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YET another of the illustrations in these pages shows the trend of recent continental open body design. It is a seven-passenger touring car with an exceedingly flat top line from radiator to rear cushion. This effect of straightness and flatness is enhanced by the use of a moulding all around the body which projects just below the top line somewhat in the manner of the fin keel of a boat. The top in this case is of the disappearing type, folding down into the side walls of the car and concealed entirely when not in use by means of a cover plate. The upholstery, as well, is distinctive. It is put on in long rolls which outline the seats, as it were, run up around the tops of the seats and form dividing lines in both driving compartment and tonneau. This treatment of the upholstery is not only attractive to the eye but is designed to increase the comfortable riding qualities of the car for long tours. With its pointed radiator and novel lines, this car, although it is entirely an American product, has a distinctly foreign flair about it.

THE use of otherwise waste space in the car to store small articles for the tour is a subject that has more than once been touched upon in these pages. It is a subject that is occupying the attention of body designers more and more. So much of the pleasure of the motor trip depends on the number of little comforts that one can conveniently carry with him that this is a matter not to be lightly put aside. One of the illustrations in this issue shows how the accommodation of such articles has been taken care of in one of the new four-passenger models.

AMONG the many different kinds of military automobiles which we will have to produce in this country for use in the war for democracy certainly will be the car for officers. All of our allies already have a variety of automobiles of this nature. One of the designs now in use by our Italian allies is shown in these pages. Mounted on a powerful chassis of Italian make, this car is at the same time a traveling coach and a domicile for the officers it carries. It is fitted with folding bunks not unlike those of our Pullman cars, so that four officers can sleep in it at night; it has a disappearing wash basin and a folding table in the center which serves for a mess table or a council board on which maps can be consulted.