I've seen these cars before. Anyone have one on here? The 1934 SV16 Cabriolet looks like a good starting point or are these car to valuable? This one pictured is the Stutz Blackhawk Le Mans built in 1929.
your talking about million dollar cars here. they are untouchable fo rthe average man. its like a duesenberg, or hispano suiza... find Bluto, he's probably got ten of em
My dad has a 1927 Stutz Doctors coupe that kinda a driver/beater and also a 1921 HCS touring. Which is a stutz before they were stutz
Both...certain models were considered to be extremely fast for their time...also owned by celebrities, etc., for what that's worth.
Actually they are very slow. One of their big selling points was that you never had to shift them...this was a by product of extremely slow gearing 4:1 and 5:1 is not an uncommon final drive ratios. The whole sports car mystique left with HCS. Not that his stuff was extremely sporty, ask any Mercer guy a Bearcat is a tank in comparision, not that comparision should ever be considered. But to a certain degree the cars are "sporty" they were fast and comfortable for what they were designed to do over the roads of the day. Hop in a '24 Model T then roll over to the '24 Stutz...well I think you can figure it out. The engines in general powerful, very torquey. They handle well for what they are and the Stop. Which more than you can say for 95% of the things at the time. What they are remembered for was Safety. The list of safety features that they pioneered is very impressive. One of the most common would be safety glass. They were using hydraulic brakes in the early 20's. The '24 Speedway six had 4 wheel hydraulic brakes. All in all lots of neat stuff. The coachwork is pretty conservative, though the last of DV32 (Moscvicks) are very elegant and stylish.
Actually over all Stutz was pretty successful, there were quite a few of them built. But wars and usage took thier toll. The main death to many of early (pre-'23) was the transaxle (liked to break in two) and then ib the later cars the transmission, the only reason they got a worth while tranny was cause it blew the 3rd gear out of the Lemans Challenger...which cost them the race. Sadly very few remain today.
depends. If you want a pre-war Bearcat yes. But compared to a 35j...pitance. Many of the 20's and 30's cars are pretty reasonable. Just dont expect to pick up a coachbuilt DV32 for cheap.
After I sold my T-head Mercer I brought a Stutz Blackhawk Speedster. This car built by a friend, was a real Hot Rod .... Corrello rods, Ross pistons, trick cam, wide ratio gearbox, very special high speed rearend gears, UUR2 Carb, 12Volt, even had H4 bulbs in the headlamps........... This was a alloy boat-tail body with 20 inch Buffalos Best of the Best ..... cost me $30,000 not high $$$ Now the bad news It took me a solid years to get the car to even start to work as good as it looked. As most of you know I've built race cars forever I HATE TO THINK WHAT IT WOULD HAVE COST A CUSTOMER!!!! In the end it was still a heavy handed POS not as fasy as it looked and you had to be very brave to go fast........ nothing as good as my Mercer built 15 years earlier maybe MAYBE 10 mph faster I traded it off for another car project AND was very happy to see it go I think that car is for sale today for about $100k The Mercer was a pleasure....... would drift with the grace of a sprint car The Stutz fought you in a solid four wheel drift and took real skill to recover Mercer ran smooth not the Stutz sounded and ran like you had a Jacobs radial in front of you And nothing old could ever beat the Mercer's 'Hot knife thru butter' shifting I will buy an L-head Mercer some day BUT NEVER A STUTZ So that's my hand's on gold-chain'r impression on Stutz There might be a Walking-beam Indy car Stutz out there for Big bucks but honest none of the others are worth owning.
So there you have it, Proof that the MERCER owners were right back in the olden days "You have to be nuts to own a Stutz"
My insanity was temporary!!! And cured by sweat and a drain on my wallet! Never NEVER AGAIN will I buy one of those Shit boxes..........
I am looking forward to getting the Speedway Six running. I have driven it a bit and it is really nice. Not truck like in any fashion. But is suffers from a very slow ass end (4:1). It is nothing like the earlier 4 cylinder cars, nor as truck/ duesenberg like as the later cars.
I've always judged cars on their looks, not driving impressions, mainly because I don't get to drive that many. How does an HCS touring perform on the road?
The 31-36 DV32 (dohc straight 8) cars were very fast for the time. A Super Bearcat (pictured) will outrun just about anything of the same era. The engine alone will run you 50k if you can find one. The SOHC 8 engines from 27-31 were not slouches for their era. There are a number of cool specials built on Stutz chassis, both recently (see the attached pic) and way back when. I'm a bit partial to mine: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=82304&highlight=schumacher+special In 1930 Stutz had a supercharger option. You can read all about that here: http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=222832&highlight=stutz+supercharger
This place is just like the Balkans! Here we are carrying on a feud/flamewar between extinct automakers that's damn near a hundred years old! This is what makes the HAMB great!
I don't know much about them, but I remember seeing one in the Harrah's Auto Museum when I was a kid in the '60s (back when it was a huge collection), and it really impressed me at the time and the name stuck in my head forever, and it looked like a helluva lot of fun to drive one of those. I even bought a big postcard with a picture of one in the lobby of the museum that I still have somewhere. I think they must have had the same effect on a lot of people. If you ask anybody to name a few cool old antique sports cars from the teens, that's one of the names that they will come up with probably. Another cool one was a Mercer. They're both really impressive and fun looking cars when you see them in real life. Maybe not as much in pictures. Maybe another thing about them that makes them stick out in the crowd is that they were painted what was considered a "shocking wild color" back then. When practically everything else was black or grey or some drab shade of burgundy or dark blue, these things were bright shocking yellow. They must have really stood out in the crowd, and little kids would have gone wild seeing one of these things race past them back in 1914. Here's a Mercer Raceabaout, and a 1914 Stutz Bearcat:
they're one of those cars that look better standing still than they actually run. not hammering them, i think they're cool; it's the time they were made and the conditions they were designed for that made them the talk of the time. not many cars could get TO 50mph much less do the full mark of 100, and the roads in almost the entire country were still basically horse trails. i wouldn't consider cutting up one, anyway. now... get me a straight Eight Packard or Buick to hack up..... the TV show "Bearcats!" with Rod Taylor, a fake Stutz with machine guns on it, and a 10 year old kid's imagination....... i tried to build one for my GI Joes out of parts from a trashed baby carriage!
Here is a Stutz Special built in the 1950s. It has a DV32 engine with 4 downdraft carbs, a shortened chassis and a Auburn 2-speed rear end. It was basically a barn find, that a dealer in California found and sold last year. I think it did a bit of SCCA racing in the early 50s but I might be wrong about that.
There was a Stutz based special racing in the early fifties that appears in a bunch of the circa 1952 Honks and Hop Ups...will look for it. I can't remember what it looked like.
Put it this way - you would be an idiot to do a Stutz (or a Cord, Auburn, Duesey, etc) in Blitz Black, paint the wheels red, and drop in a SBC.
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