Chevy6 is from Australia and he said above that the car had a Holden body. Maybe he can give us more details regarding the Holden bodied convertible landau?
As a side note, the ad concerns General Motors of Australia.
I would be leery of this as well. Convertible Landaus were assembled in Canada, Which would make them "available" in Australia... but it would be interesting to see if any were even sold there. Given the troubles that Holden Chevrolet had selling the made in Australia Moonlight Speedsters in '31-'32, it seems unlikely that buyers would be willing to pay a premium for such an impractical car, plus the cost of shipping it over there. General Motors of Australia would still be considered the importer of Canadian built cars so would still do the advertising. Also, Holden was not a GM company until 1931, so I'm sceptical that any 1929's were Holden bodied. I think we should stick to our policy of "show me the data plate" before we add Australia to the list of Convertible Landau factories...
Last edited by brewster; 08/21/1311:32 AM.
Those accustomed to the finest...find it in Chevrolet. 1953 Belair Convertible 1951 2dr Deluxe Sedan 2015 GMC SLE 4X4
Bill Barker, in view of the long lasting and likely forever discussion this topic of "How Many '29 ILC's are there" will get, can you consider re-titling it (delete reference to trim etc), and giving it a special status of some sort similar to the old photos topic. Replies now approach 200 and 8 pages, so perhaps deserves it's own topic. I would also encourage Dawg or someone to publish the details they have on all the known surviving cars, as a look over all the numbers may suggest a pattern heretofore not realized. I am still of the belief that this model was a small number production due to the depression, its quirkyness/impracticality, its likely recall problems, and the possibility all of its carcases/bodies were made in one plant, regardless of where final assembly took place. GM's decision to stop production cold must have been based on something, such as small sales response. A survival rate of 30+% for a quirky car would not be unusual, 100% of the Bugatti Royales built survive, something like 80% of the early Rolls Royces survive, same so for Duesenbergs, etc. Not that I'm putting '29 ILC's in that class, but you know what I mean. The people "with airs" who would have likely bought these, likely had garages to keep them in and other second cars to drive in bad weather!
It was the start of the depression... people weren't driving two cars, and those that were did not shop in the Chevrolet show room. Car collecting was unheard of before the 1950's, so no one had any reason to keep these cars around at the survival rate that shows assuming 300 were produced. I think the number came from the total built at one factory, and 8000 or so were made between all of the factories. 8000 is still a number small enough to get the model cancelled, especially if they were sitting on the dealership floors. No one thought they were anything special by 1930... just an old Chevy with a leaky roof. I think that the couple of hundred owners left with one today are the only ones that hope the number is 300...
Last edited by brewster; 08/21/1302:11 PM.
Those accustomed to the finest...find it in Chevrolet. 1953 Belair Convertible 1951 2dr Deluxe Sedan 2015 GMC SLE 4X4
I would also encourage Dawg or someone to publish the details they have on all the known surviving cars, as a look over all the numbers may suggest a pattern heretofore not realized.
Gunsmoke, I'm glad that you mentioned that. Actually, we are way ahead of you on this. There are several of us right now that have been working on additional documentation over and above of what we already have, and we are also doing a spread sheet of the many, many existing cars that we have found. With 100 cars located (so far) phone calls and etc. are being made to get the Job Numbers, Body Numbers, Car Serial Numbers and etc. for our spread sheet. This is going to take some time because there are still a lot of cars out there. When completed, there will be an article published in the G&D with the results. However, we want to document as many cars as possible for the article so that we will have a complete overview. If you go back and read some of my previous postings, you will see that with the cars that we have documented already (over 30 at this point), based on the body numbers and the car serial numbers, we have documented that cars were made in 10 factories (which includes Canada) and with all of the factories combined that we have determined already that at least 15,000 convertible landaus were made. And, we still have many more survivors to document.
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I am still of the belief that this model was a small number production due to the depression, its quirkyness/impracticality, its likely recall problems, and the possibility all of its carcases/bodies were made in one plant, regardless of where final assembly took place.
As mentioned above, the body numbers documented so far have determined that at least 15,000 were made. That is not a small production when you consider that only 8,632 tourings were made in 1929.
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GM's decision to stop production cold must have been based on something, such as small sales response.
We have documentation from exisiting literature, engine serial numbers and casting dates that the convertible landau was made from December up to about June of 1929. I don't think that should be considered as "stopping the production cold" since the car was manufactured for at least six to seven months of the model year.
I think we should stick to our policy of "show me the data plate" before we add Australia to the list of Convertible Landau factories...
Getting data plate information from Australia is on our list of "things to do" for our spread sheet, since we have heard previously that Holden bodied convertible landaus were made in Australia. Now the task is to find one that has the data plate information.
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I think the number came from the total built at one factory, and 8000 or so were made between all of the factories.
Actually, we have documented that at least 8,101 convertible landaus were made in the Flint factory alone. And, with all of the factories thrown in we are up to at least 15,423 produced so far in our research.
Yes, from what it appears at this point, the "300" number came from the convertible landaus that were made in one factory apparently in December of 1928. However, as you know, that "300" does not represent the total production in all factories for the complete production run for the 1929 model year.
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I think that the couple of hundred owners left with one today are the only ones that hope the number is 300...
That is probably true! However, one of the VCCA members on the research team does own a convertible landau and he also agrees that the "300" figure is totally false and that there were actually thousands of them made.
I spoke to Alan a member of the Veteran & Vintage Chevrolet Association of Australia this morning, he restored a Holden bodied Landau Sedan that he sold a few years ago and he is aware of another near Adelaide. There are very sketchy records of production here but Holden through necessity had mastered small production runs. The Moonlight Speedster and Coupes attest to this. Alan is looking through photos to see if he has anything that may help and we will try and contact the owner of the other Landau.
Great!!! I really appreciate it. If you can get some numbers and information from data plates that sure would help and we will definitely add that information to our spread sheet. As I said above, I have heard in the past that Holden did make the convertible landau. When you confirm that the car in question does have data tag information supporting that it was made by Holden then we will add that to our factory list as well.
You can either post the info. here or send me a PM with the information.
Again, I really appreciate your efforts on this since we want to get as many convertible landaus documented as we can.
To add a little more to the discussion. My grand parents bought a new '29 Chevrolet (first Chevy in the family) from the Chevrolet dealer in Marshall Michigan in 1929. They only owned it for approximately six months. My grandmother took off the landau iron on one side on a tree branch driving it their house. The drive was a trail from the neighbors property through the woods as the county road right away had yet to be donated by my grandfather. According to my grandmother the reason they took it back and traded it on a Marmon Sedan was that the cylinders "were bored on the bias". For you none seamstresses it at an angle or translated into automotivese "used too much oil". Unfortunately don't have any of the original documentation on that car.
Another Canadian built one from Quebec in this set... not sure if it's an after restoration of the one in the youtube video. Lots of other nice early cars to look at as well.
Geeze... I've found 3 in 10 minutes, and people think there are 300 of these??!!
Those accustomed to the finest...find it in Chevrolet. 1953 Belair Convertible 1951 2dr Deluxe Sedan 2015 GMC SLE 4X4
Geeze... I've found 3 in 10 minutes, and people think there are 300 of these??!!
Yep, that is what I have been trying to convince some Chevy dudes for years......that there were way, way more than 300 of the convertible landaus made since these things keep popping up on a regular basis. Now, with the body number research in progress, the existing body numbers that we are finding confirms that the 300 figure is totally false.
I sent them an email with a link to our thread... I assume that it's a broker selling with the info he was supplied. I'll post any replies if they come...
Those accustomed to the finest...find it in Chevrolet. 1953 Belair Convertible 1951 2dr Deluxe Sedan 2015 GMC SLE 4X4
Yep, definitely keep us posted. Also, if you correspond with him see if you can get the Job Number, Body Number, Engine Serial Number and Casting Date, and the Car Serial Number. That would be good information to have for our spread sheet.
Kellogg, a fella who could buy any car he wanted, bought an Imperial Landau, then the car went into a museum presumable with some background. If Kellogg could buy a Duisenberg but bought a Chevy, there had to be some reason other than a leaky roof. I await the inventory but please be sure to use a fixed cut-off date.
By a "fixed cut-off date" I assume that you meant a cut-off date as to when the research will be finished. Actually, the cut-off date will be when we finish contacting everyone on our long list and when the spread sheet is finished as well. Since there are so many surviving convertible landaus out there it takes time to systematically contact everyone on our list to get the specific information that we need, especially when some of the cars have been previously sold and those new owners have to be tracked down. Doing in-depth research such as this takes a great deal of time and patience.
You will see the results in the G&D when the project is completed.
Cut Off is not when the report is finished, it is a date when the inventor is counted. Like putting together a Balance Sheet in Accounting. You count the inventory, say on December 31, then issue your count with the financials. The Financial / report is usually 90 days later.If you do not have a single date for your inventory, it is possible to miss or over count. A sort of similar over count happen at the beginning of WWII. Our pacific fleet as in very bad shape. To buy time, and mislead the Japanese, we sent a carrier into the south pacific with orders to be seen in multiple places. The ruse did mislead in that the Japanese saw one, but thought they saw several carriers. I am anxious for the inventory, and suggest maybe an ad in the VCCA to get owner input.
Yep, I see what you mean about the inventory cut-off. Right now, we have about 100 cars listed and we are going through the complete list one car at a time until we have contacted every car owner on the list or the majority of those that we are able to contact. During that period of time we are also looking for new cars to add to the inventory list as well. At any rate, as soon as we have contacted every car owner that is possible on the list we will be done with the inventory and the research program. Since were are documenting all Convertible Landaus by their Body Numbers and Serial Numbers during this process there will be no duplicate cars listed on our spreadsheet.
Already have an ad in the G&D coming out requesting anyone with a 1929 Convertible Landau to contact me with the specific information that I have requested in the ad. Once the ad appears in the G&D, it will run for six months and by that time we should have contacted most of the car owners that are on our inventory list as well.
Thanks for the update! At this point, it looks like neither one of those two cars are on our long list, so now we have two more to add. By the way, according to the body number on item 141066249371, the car was manufactured in Janesville, and it was the 1,768th convertible landau built in that factory.
