From Cabinet Secretary Eduardo Dato to legendary aviator Amelia Earhart, through Ray Harroun, the first Indianapolis 500 winner, names that remind us of an unusual car brand, now defunct
The hands of the clock passed a quarter past eight on the night of March 8, 1921. A car, which had just left the Senate a few minutes ago, drives up Calle de Alcalá in Madrid. It is followed by an Indian motorcycle with three occupants…
Arriving at the Plaza de la Independencia, several shots are heard, eighteen of which go through the body of the car. The passenger in the back of the car is dying. His name is D.
Edward Datachairman of the Council of Ministers.
Ramon Casanellasthe motorcyclist, accelerates and flees with his two companions:
peter matthew Y
Louis Nicholas. The three anarchist gunmen disappear into the night.
Today, Eduardo Dato’s car is on display, along with Prim’s horse-drawn carriage, in the Army Museum of Toledo. It is a Marmon model 34, with registration number ARM-121. And, for history, in the trial of the murderers of the President of the Council of Ministers, the damage to the car was estimated at 2,900 pesetas, as reported in the ABC information of March 22, 1923.
Based in Indianapolis, the Marmon Motor Company was founded in 1902 by engineer Howard Carpenter Marmon (1876-1943) along with his brother Walter. They came from a family of industrialists. His father, Daniel W. Marmon, was a co-founder of the Nordykef & Marmon Company (in Indianapolis), the largest grain grinder manufacturer in the world at the end of the SXIX.
Howard was a very innovative engineer, one of the pioneers of the use of aluminum in the car, in search of weight savings. Thus, the Marmons were immediately recognized as not only elegant but also refined cars. His first engine was an interesting four-cylinder V-shaped, air-cooled engine with valve timing. Later they moved to the six and eight cylinders, maintaining cooling by air.
And as technology enthusiasts, they saw competition as a means to improve.
Exactly a car of his creation was the winner of the first running of the Indianapolis 500, in 1911. In reality, Howard Marmon was fully involved in the plans regarding the organization of the test. He also had more personal goals for the race: to win the race, as a pinnacle of Nordyke & Marmon’s 60-year history and as a way to promote his cars.
Howard planned the construction of his car based on the racing strategy he intended to follow: a powerful engine, a 9.8-litre straight-six engine, but low weight (the hallmark of the house) and not trying to get to top speed. to rush, but to maintain a rhythm that would prevent the wheels from suffering (collisions were common) and thus have to stop in the pits less often and avoid the risk of accidents. The Marmon Wasp (“Wasp”), christened with this name for its yellow color and rear-facing, was the only vehicle equipped with a single seat, which would be occupied by the pilot Ray Harroun, instead of the usual configuration with two seats, one for the driver and a second for the mechanic. The single-seat arrangement was controversial. It was claimed that it was dangerous as the driver could not be warned by the mechanic of the position of the other cars following or about to overtake him. As a solution, Marmon’s team devised a primitive rear-view mirror, the first of its kind according to many historians. By the way, Harroun later said that the mirror shook so much during the race that he couldn’t see anything…
In any case, the Marmon went down in history on May 30, 1911 as the winning car of the first Indianapolis 500.
In 1916 he presented the Marmon 34 (the one corresponding to Dato’s), as an evolution of the type 32. It was powered by a six-cylinder engine with an output of 34 hp, hence the name. It was an advanced car for its time, notable for the use of aluminum in many of its components, both mechanical and body: the engine block, gearbox, differential, fenders or hood. The introduction of the Model 34 in 1916 was one of the first examples of designing the car as a complete unit, from engine to body.
It featured various body types including roadsters, speedsters, touring and limousines, to name a few. The only available chassis had a wheelbase of 3.45 meters and the weight was around 1500 kilos.
The company advertised the 34 that crossed the United States in less than six days in 1916, breaking the record set by “Cannon Ball” Baker by 41 hours, who had traveled from Los Angeles to New York in seven days in a Cadillac . eleven hours and 52 minutes.
The 34, after a series of modifications, was the fastest production car produced in the United States in the early 1920s, something that made it very popular among bootleggers during Prohibition…
Production of the Model 34 continued until 1924, when it was replaced by the Models 74 and 75.
As we said, the Marmons were always very advanced cars for their time. And without a doubt, his masterpiece was the 1931 16 V, with a sixteen-cylinder V engine. The builders of the time sought to rely on engines with low vibration, elasticity and high performance for luxury cars. . We are talking about engines with a large displacement and therefore with large pistons, so that they could not rotate with many revolutions, with which the four and six cylinders were quite limited. That is why the eight, twelve and, as the maximum technical expression of displacement, the sixteen-cylinder engines were born.
Marmon’s V16 was not the first with this number of cylinders (a Duesenberg was already used in competition in 1919, or a Cadillac in a 1930 street model) but it was considered one of the best of its time, as a real mechanical jewel, which earned him the prestigious prize of the Society of Automobile Engineers. It was the work of Howard Marmon, George Freers and Thomas Little, engineers with a lot of experience behind them, who, like Cadillac, chose a 45-degree V. This engine, which produced 200 horsepower, produced 390 units, some of which were to be used in record-breaking cars.
But the 1929 crisis, like so many others, changed the automotive landscape and one of the brands that could not resist the change was Marmon, which ceased production in 1933.
For history there remains the memory of a brand, cars that were not only fast but also very reliable, using internal innovations created by in-house engineers and incorporating the latest available developments.
It was a prestigious brand that competed with Packard, Cadillac, Pierce-Arrow or Lincoln, the cars used to photograph Hollywood stars, athletes or billionaires behind the wheel.
Actor Francis X. Bushman spent nearly $20,000 on his custom amethyst 1915 Model 48. Pioneer driver Barney Oldfield, remembered as the first man to hit 100 km/h on an oval track, invented the 1921 Marmon 34B he drove and the Indy Pace Car that year so good he bought it: pole sitter Ralph di Palma commented afterwards that that car…was the fastest car on the track!
When Amelia Earhart returned to New York after her 1928 transatlantic flight, she paraded across Broadway in a Marmon Sixteen Convertible Sedan.
But perhaps the greatest compliment to Marmon was given to Henry Ford, who, before taking over the Lincoln Motor Car Company, drove to work in a custom-built Marmon Model 34.
Undoubtedly a car brand with many stories to tell.
Source: La Verdad
I am Ida Scott, a journalist and content author with a passion for uncovering the truth. I have been writing professionally for Today Times Live since 2020 and specialize in political news. My career began when I was just 17; I had already developed a knack for research and an eye for detail which made me stand out from my peers.
