Wooden Car Craftsmanship

Wooden cars of days gone by

Before fiberglass and carbon fiber the fiber of choice was wood.

Wood was sometimes used in cars for a number of reasons.

Wood is attractive. Wood was lighter than steel so you needed a smaller engine to power the car.

Here are 4 of the coolest wooden cars.

The Chrysler Town and Country

It’s the classic woodie. These station wagons were build of wood because it was a simpler cheaper way to build a full wagon body than working with steel at that time.

Those woodie wagons ended up getting famous for serving as the stereotypical surfer transportation of choice before the days of VW Buses, Dodge vans, and whatever else. Cool as it was to hang out with Jan and Dean, if we had to pick just one woodie to represent them all, we’d go for a stunning old Chrysler Town & Country, from the days when Chrysler was a top luxury brand. We are particularly drawn to the prewar fastback sedans, which themselves played a part in replacing wood with metal. They were the first woodie longroofs to have an all-steel roof.

Photo Credit: Joe Ross

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1939 Lagonda Rapide Tulipwood Tourer

This big British cruiser came powered with a 4.5 liter V12 churning out 225 horsepower. We imagine that’s enough to get the brass-riveted tulipwood body up to speed with frightening alacrity for such a sizeable automobile.

The wood made for a good building material as it was light, could be made into aerodynamic shapes like this torpedo body, and was much stronger than the other lightweight car body material of the cay, canvas. If you’re wondering how much it costs to get something as stunning as this in your massive garage, you’ll have to have something around $450,000. That’s how much this Lagonda went for when it was put up for auction back in 2007.

Photo Credit: Brandon Brubaker

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 Morgans

Morgans had little engines, but didn’t weight much on account of their wood frame. Low costs and an endless supply of eccentric British customers meant that Morgan could keep on building its elemental four-wheeled cars and never have to stop. You can still buy one of these things new today, and they are regular front runners in vintage races all over the world.

Morgan even keeps its wood thing going with their new heavily aluminum Aero 8, with its Ash frame getting plenty of punishment form a nice, big BMW V8.

Photo Credit: Otis Blank

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1924 Hispano-Suiza Tulipwood Torpedo

 This 1924 H6C, with a 200 horsepower, eight-liter straight-six wrapped up in a tulipwood body was built to take on southern Italy’s great road race, the Sicilian Targa Florio.

The coachwork of ¾ inch strips of wood was built by a French aviation company, Nieuport and it weighed a mere 160 pounds. Like the Lagonda, the wood was riveted together with brass, and it looks absolutely amazing.

Photo Credit: CarStyling.ru

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For more great wooden cars go to the source article.

The ten coolest wooden cars of all time

All images were from the original article

Wooden Car Craftsmanship