1912 CRANE MODEL 3 PHAETON

Once upon a time a long time ago people with the means to do so didn’t just buy a car and then trade it in a few years later for another car. They bought a car to last their lifetime. It was a purchase as important to them as the Chippendale sofa they may have acquired and meant to last just as long. The style of it was what the purchaser required and had no interest in ‘modernizing’ down the road.  This was the car you were meant to be seen in, associated with and identified by.

The Crane Motor Company of Bayonne, New Jersey produced very high end high quality automobiles from 1912 through 1915. They were costly, the chassis alone was valued at $8000, this at a time when a Model T Ford cost $500, but these were cars for those to whom money was no object.

In 1912, the company began the production of the Model 3. It came equipped with a six-cylinder engine that delivered 46 horsepower and was mated to a four-speed transmission and featured shaft drive. Crane built the chassis then sent the vehicles to coachbuilders to be fitted with coachwork. A popular coachbuilder for the Crane was Brewster & Company and most of the Cranes wore their coachwork.

Between 1912 and 1913, around 20 examples of the Model 3 were built. 4 were built in 1914. The companies six-cylinder engine caught the attention of the well-established Simplex Automobile Company of New Brunswick, NJ. Many automakers were switching to larger, more powerful engines, and the Simplex chain drive four-cylinder engine was in need of being replaced. The Simplex Automobile Company purchased the Crane Motor Car Company and future cars were known as the Crane-Simplex. Production continued in the Simplex factory and by 1917, around 500 chassis examples were built. Brewster continued on as one of the favoured coachbuilders, along with Holbrook, Demarest, and Healey.

Socialite Helen Hartley Jenkins of Madison Avenue, NYC, originally owned this Crane Model 3. One of the wealthiest women in America, she originally paid $15,000 for the car. The Seal Cove museum of Maine acquired it in 1986 where it currently resides still in good running order.

As it was meant to.