Coachbuilt, an encyclopedia of American Coachbuilders

January 5, 2012 11:21 AM

Coachbuilt is an encyclopedia of American coachbuilders, from Adam Black & Sons, makers of commercial coaches and co-designers of the iconic UPS P-600 package delivery truck, to the York-Hoover Body Company, who started out as a prolific supplier of wooden depot hack and station wagon bodies for the Ford Model T, later catering to the funeral home/furniture store marketplace by offering a combination motorized funeral coach/furniture delivery car using a stretched Model T chassis.
posted by filthy light thief (2 comments total)

At first glance, you might say "hey, that's a lot of coachbuilders." But click any given link, and you'll find a trove of history, plus sources for that information. I came across this when looking for more information on a 1926 Bickle/Studebaker fire engine that worked in the middle of winter, when two modern (circa 1959) engines were frozen solid.

I found that the Bickle/Studebaker was a Bickle coach over a Studebaker chasis. Bickle was formed by former traveling singer Robert Sydney Bickle, and later his nephew Vernon B. King, a recent engineering graduate from the University of Toronto, designed a complete line of custom apparatus, which enabled the conpany to market under the slogan "Strictly Canadian - Built by Canadians."
posted by filthy light thief at 1:01 PM on January 5, 2012

In short: there's more here than US coachbuilders. There are a a bunch of Canadian companies, and four Mexican companies.
posted by filthy light thief at 1:04 PM on January 5, 2012