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Marmon Model 34 B - Speedster body - manufactured in 1922
While for the last couple of decades the American car industry has condensed down to the "big three" car manufacturing concerns there was a time when the American vehicle industry was immensely diverse. That period started just after the introduction of the automobile in the US around the turn of the 20th century and ended more or less during the great depression in the early 1930s. In those thirty-odd years hundreds of car factories appeared and disappeared all over the country, fortune hunters and ambitious engineers alike fighting for a piece of the rapidly growing market for motorized transportation. The demand for cars boomed like nowhere else in the world, resulting in a tumultuous cascade of makes trying to cater for it.
Part of this colorful and exciting episode in automotive history was the renown Marmon of Indianapolis, Indiana in the US. Car manufacture under the Marmon name was started in 1902 by Howard Marmon, an ambitious and talented engineer, as a side project in the family business of making flour milling machinery. The first cars were experimental and showed advanced features like air-cooled engines with overhead valves, shaft drive and force feed lubrication. In 1905 the first production model was introduced with an air-cooled 4-cylinder engine in V configuration which was made in small numbers. Models with V6 and V8 engines appeared the following years but didn't find many buyers.
It wasn't until more conventional designs were offered in 1909 that Marmon car production picked up. Especially the Model 32 with its water-cooled in-line 4 cylinder side-valve engine established Marmon's good reputation and secured the make a place on the market. A racing special based on the Model 32 named the Wasp won the first edition of the now famous Indianapolis 500 race in 1911 with driver Ray Harroun, an event which generated plenty of favorable publicity. Another attempt at marketing an advanced car design was made by Howard Marmon in 1916 when the Model 34 was introduced. It stood out because it made extensive use of aluminum in engine and body construction. The engine was a straight 6-cylinder with overhead valves. The Model 34 was successful as a fine, high-quality automobile; it's qualities were stressed by improving the cross-country record set by a V8 Cadillac by 41 hours in its year of introduction. It was made up to 1928 in various guises with prices matching those of Cadillac but unfortunately wasn't as profitable.
By the mid 1920s Marmon was losing money and new management was brought in. The strategy was changed from making high quality, high priced cars in limited numbers to making more affordable cars in larger numbers. And so the "Little Marmon" appeared in 1927, a conventional straight 8-cylinder car costing about a third less than the more powerful 6-cylinder models. In the following year the model name disappeared but the new 8-cylinder engines started to replace the older 6-cylinder units and in 1929 only the 8-cylinder models were left, including the new Roosevelt model which was a bargain for Marmon standards at only a third of the price of the fased-out 6-cylinder models. Marmon sales soared to new heights and company's fortunes prospered.
But then there was the stock market crash and the subsequent depression hit Marmon hard; production dwindled rapidly to only 86 cars in 1933. Strangely during that dire period Marmon introduced its most grandiose model ever: the Series 16, a big, expensive and beautiful top class car with a 16-cylinder engine. When the high quality 6-cylinder Marmon models neared the end of their lifespan and the new Marmon management started the more affordable 8-cylinder line Howard Marmon set out to create the model that should supersede the previous quality cars. This was to be the world's first V16 engined car. Unfortunately this took him longer than anticipated and the Cadillac V16 model beat him to the market, designed by a former Marmon engineer. The Marmon 16 was first shown in 1930 but it took until 1931 before deliveries of the model commenced, much too late to find a profitable market for this wonderful car. It was offered alongside the 8-cylinder models at first but when the demand for the cheaper Marmons evaporated the 16 became the companies only model until the end came in 1933.
While the Marmon 16, of which only 400 have been made, ensured Marmon's everlasting place in automotive history it was the more common Model 34 and its derivatives that established Marmon's name for making fine cars. It was lightweight, powerful and fast and more advanced than most of its competition. It's a great example of what good engineering was capable of during the automotive boom in the early part of the 20th century.
The Marmon name lived on in truck manufacture but this had little to do with the Marmon Motor Car Company or Howard Marmon. It was his brother Walter Marmon who continued with Arthur Herrington to produce 4-wheel drive trucks after the demise of the car company and much later the Marmon name was adopted by a Texan truck manufacturer.
© André Ritzinger, Amsterdam, Holland
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