Bodybuilding Extravaganza: The History of Coachbuilding Cars
Vložit
- čas přidán 7. 10. 2023
- A classic car connaisseur takes a look at the lost art and craft of custom coachbuilding. The 1930s was considerd the golden age of coachbuilding cars. But when the regular car industry decided to move away from body on frame cars in favour of unibody construction, coachbuilding came to an end. In this video we celebrate the beauty of custom coachbuilt cars. Will they ever come back? Maybe with the rise of electric vehicles?
Remember to like, subscribe and share if you want more of this!
You can follow me on Instagram: / edsautoreviews
You can always email me at:
edsautoreviews@gmail.com
Enjoy! - Auta a dopravní prostředky
Hey, I was surprised you didn’t mention the Sultan of Brunei. That man single-handedly kept the coach building industry going in the 90’s. The list of one off cars he had commissioned is incredible and it seems most were done by the manufacturer but they were also send directly from production lines to coach builders. Definitely a fascinating part of automotive history in my opinion
I remember the affordable kits you could get to convert VW beetle's. They had many models to choose from.
The Volksroyce!
Based on the most recent comments from Rolls-Royce, they want to continue this lost art of 30's style coachbuilding, and they have already done that with the Sweptail, Boattail and lately the Droptail. While these cars are built as unibody cars, they still seem to rebuild the base cars way beyond just a bodykit. Their price is sky high, but their art and style comes close to what was done in the golden era, with extreme shapes and design elements that are far away from practical or useful solutions. They simply exist to be beautiful - or at least an art piece - and that they are in my eyes. What do you think of them? Are they a valid continuation?
It took RR over 4 and a half years to hand-build the remarkable Sweptail, but it is a far car from the coach-building glory days of the 1920s and 30s.
Oh RR is a good one! I feel like this is some sort of 'in between' approach? Instead of buying a car and then sending it to a coachbuilder, you already get a pseudo-coachbuilt car from the factory? Interesting!
@@EdsAutoReviews exact same thing in the guitar manufacturing industries. The major brands have “custom shops” where you can order the things you want on a base model
@@EdsAutoReviewscoachbuilding is an entire division within RR
@@EdsAutoReviews
The silver spinny car and the black one in the background are named Aquarius and Black Pearl.... owned by James Hetfield of Metallica.
🤘😎🤘
In Indonesia the regulation says that bus maker (Hino, Isuzu, etc) cannot build its own body, so the body must be made by local coach builder. The popular local coach builders are Laksana, Adi Putro, and New Armada.
And back then the regulation also says that the passenger compartment (body behind the 1st row) of minivan must be made by local coach builder, thats why older minivans in Indonesia have a lot of different passenger compartment design made by those different coach builders.
coach building on buses has been doing well very long indeed. same for Caravans/RV`s
Same thing goes here in the Philippines, we coachbuild our busses
Buses and coaches (as a type of bus) are different anywhere. They still follow the "Body on frame" model. The frame comes from a car maker such as Mercedes-Benz, and the body comes from a specialized company. This is because the truck maker has no interest to invest in all the types of bus customers might want (be it a local service bus, long distance, or a city bus).
A history of kit cars video would be cool
I like this idea, but the downside for Ed would be all the negative comments about how such-and-such was left out.
@@TheOtherBill Ed doesn't need to care about what people are gonna complain about. If people politely comment under the video about what's missing, it's good. People always have to bear in mind, that they are always only suggesting content, not the way the said content has to be presented. That's all on the creator of the content people suggest.
Zagato/Touring is still pretty active on the coach building scene. Probably also one of the last true independent coach building companies to my knowledge.
He totally forgot about the Sciadipersia (modified GranTurismo) and the Bellagio Fastback (Cinqueporte?)
I always found it a bit amazing how they were able to build some of these cars (in general) back at a time when CAD was not even a thing, and everything was done by "hand" (designs were drawn by hand, machining for the most part was done by hand, with little to no automation in the way of layout or cutting/measuring like a modern CNC machine might do with its level of precision, etc).
Truly a craft!
I wonder how long there will be people who still master this craft (for Restaurations for example), they will get rarer and rarer I guess
Thankfully some small firm called Runge out in the USA still keeps it alive. Makes stuff that looks like it’s right out of the 30s. Another potential form of custom coach building could be Veilside as the body work of their famous RX7 body kits and Toyota Supra body kits change the body work completely. Though they aren’t one of one you still need to be filthy rich for one. First you gotta drop 20-50 grand on an RX7 then another 15 for the veilside body.
The average new pickup costs about $60K in the US. 35-65 isn't exactly nosebleed territory anymore.
Runge's work is beautiful.
@@Harv72b idk for me I see it as being rich bc I’m a 20 year old idiot who will never go to college and is stuck in a dead end job delivering pizza
@@Detah_ Get. A. Trade.
@@peterk2455 literally everyone says that on the internet but idk I have no passion for it and they require a lot of exercise don't they? I'm American and Americans are... you know.
H.J. Mulliner & Co. and Park Ward have always added a special touch to any Rolls Royce. Thanks for the video.
Beautiful work, Ed! I would agree, coach built automobiles are in fact rolling art.
Ed, there is a Japanese coachbuilder called Mitsuoka which uses some japanese cars as a base to make reto looking bodies, such as Corvette look from a Mazada MX5 or a retro SUV Wagon from a Toyota Rav4. One day Ill buy a 1st gent BMW 2 series and coachbuild it to a E30 retro look! Cheers!
I saw one case where I woman took I believe to be a C4 Corvette and had a custom body made for it to resemble a '58. It turned out pretty well.
The question then is copying a look as good as creating a look? I long for originality. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, for instance, we had Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Arts and Crafts, that emerged in the design world that been building on age old ideas. Since then...just variations on a theme. It seems to be the nature of the beast that originality only pops up rarely and at irregular intervals, or in clumps. It's unpredictable. You can predict you will repeat the past but not that you will invent the future of design.
A speed racer model would've been appropriate from this company. I thought there was a speed racer type kit for VWframes that someone had made.
@653j521 I prefer the more completely original cars too, but all inspiration comes from somewhere, so in a way most original custom cars owe their design to visions that stand on the shoulders of other preexisting car designs.
I was thinking about Mitsuoka too - rebuilt Nissan Micras that look a bit like an old Jag
Have had this topic on my mind since a ‘39 Figoni et Falaschi Delahaye won best of show at the Detroit Concours a couple weeks ago.
Also, never noticed until now that your intro music was the 93 KHJ theme.
Thank you for making this excellent video.
Where is The "Real" Don Steele when you need him?
Busted! I love listening to vintage KHJ airchecks...
was thinking the same
Delicious and creamy, as usual. Now, I want to see a segment from Ed on the world's most beautiful dashboards....or the evolution of dashboard design, which also seems to be a rapidly declining artform with the proliferation of LED screens in cars. A great dashboard should stroke its driver and passengers with a feeling of power and control.
Also something rather mysterious in my mind anyway, is the relationship between dashboard controls and what goes on behind the dash as it interfaces with the mechanics and circuitry of the car. Good luck and keep on coachin'.
Enjoyed the video. Cars in general are much more complex and difficult to break down to essential components in order to re-body.
0:22 Ohh, interesting. I was playing L.A Noire recently and I found this car in the game, I love how all the cars there are real cars, and most of them are obscure cars that few people know about.
Oh, that would be SO COMMON driving a production vehicle.
Thank you Ed for all your research, knowledge and video skills to produce and post these fabulous videos. Thank you, thank you!
Thank you! More to come!
Another excellent example could have been Holden, as it evolved from being a saddle maker, to a coach builder to a subsidiary manufacturer
Such a shame Holden isn't around any longer...
@@EdsAutoReviews yes, I see your point
Ed, you are knowledgeable & prolific in the number of series installments. Always enjoy your stuff. HOWEVER, you could have touched on how 20s Art Deco, and design of Airplanes, Ships, & Trains helped evolve auto design into more flowing design lines.
Also hand pounding of steel or aluminum is so slow & expensive. Boxy MORGAN still does it ($$$$$). Most production line welding now is robot spot (pinch) welding. Hardly any major bolt on body components. If sold in America, there are the 30 mph crash requirements.
Most production vehicles are front wheel drive (or AWD). That said, FWD only vehicles are really not that raw performance oriented. And let's face it, this is the sunset of automobile styling & trim. Most of it looks the same (gag me with a spoon). Manufacturers dont take chances anymore. Remember the Alamo, I mean the Edsel.
Asset class vehicles are fast, or have luxurious interiors, and are expensive. They are NOT how little Geppetto made it. Rolls does have a headliner showing the star pattern at the owner's birth. Flying Cadillac Allante car bodies from Italy was a business disaster for GM. I didnt think it looked that great anyway.
You make some great points! But, regarding your first one about 1920s and 30s aerodynamics, do I have the episode for you! My video '100 Years of Car Design: An Overview' touches a bit on 1930s art deco and streamline czcams.com/video/nfAmIOrczHI/video.html
EXCELLENT.
I wonder if a rebirth relies on a society with extremes of wealth and poverty so a rich person can hire a poor person with the required skills for a pittance, as in the yesteryear of mansion and cathedral building. I know about a capitol building that was repaired in the 1930s with the help of imported Italian tile experts who fixed the mosaic floor. (On the other hand, a family can overdo the opulence, like the one that splashed out so much money on partying while others suffered that they felt it was wiser to decamp to Europe.)
@653j521 //
It takes an immense trades class (for Dutch Rembrandts); English Industrials (powered looms & Coal mines with steam engines to drain them), American Robber Barons (Carnegies, Rockefellers, Vanderbilts), and The Czars (to afford Farberge Eggs). You could not have had the artisans & craft guilds without the Medici, aristocracy, & Papacy. Also the towering Cathedrals & Mosque would not have occured without strong church & state.
Missed my Ed's reviews!! More brilliant content more often please! Thanks for another outstanding video 🙂
"Handbuilt means the doors will fall off" ...to be fair, Jeremy *was* referring to a British car of the 60s/70s.
Jeremy, that smug b-stard.
You sure? I mean, You could say the same about British Leyland assembly line cars of the same era 😛
Tis called a joke 😂
Edward, take a look at "the Beast", the USA presidential car, built on a truck chassis.
Another excellent video, thank You !
THANK YOU, ED!!! Another great video! 🐰
Im a little bit of a coachbuilder myself
interesting, and relevant, video. I live in Vysoké Mýto, Czech Republic, and there was a guy here named Sodomka, who built carriages and wagons until the 1920s, when, as you explained, he switched over to making customised bodies for car companies. In the 1920s and 1930s, Sodomka was a well known name among auto enthusiasts throughout Europe, winning awards at various concours d'elegance. They also made customised utility vehicles like buses and ambulances. After the war, when the Communists took over, they decided that they should focus on vehicles for the masses, so Carrosserie Sodomka became Karosa, building buses. Today they are part of Iveco, still building the best buses in the world!
I can only agree, these 1930's custom built cars are absolutely beautiful, it's literally an art on wheels.
Ed, you never cease to amaze! Aerodynamic pornography...I'm addicted! Episode 56 is one of my favorites. Thought you might include the Phantom Corsair, but maybe it doesn't quite fit. Keep up the good work. Dave
These vehicles are definitely art. Pleasing to the eye and elegant to a level never seen before or since.
those skateboard platforms could give coachbuilders the chance to make what the gm hywire would have been
Tesla just patented a completely drive-by-wire system - no steering column. The idea honestly kind of freaks me out, but it will make it even easier for coachbuilders to go completely crazy with the skateboard platform designs.
5:12 Someone hand back those tunnel of love rides !!! 🤣
Great video. Would the Dune Buggy created in the 60s be considered a custom body. I think that there could be a good market for custom body panels, and convertible kits for common models. I can see the demand for unique models.
Yeah, there were quite a few kits for the VW bug. My dad once thought about making one into a Kelmark.
@@dr.elvis.h.christ Like all the kits for the Model T and A.
most excellent video - thanks. can't wait for the next one.
I used to work with a guy in the 70s, he was a coach builder at Vanden Plas.
The way you pronounce jonkheeren was the give away ive been waiting for
Glad you covered this topic! One of the best parts of automotive history.
that silver on on the turntable is incredible
One problem for modern coachbuilding of cars is the need to meet crash standards and in particular in Europe, pedestrian safety standards/rules. Still, those 1920's-1930's coachbuilt bodied cars like you showed are works of art, indeed 'erotic' in some cases.
I think one of your video subjects should be the car based pick-up or utility vehicles mainly popular in North American (Chevy El Camino) and Australia (Holden and Ford 'utes'). The history of the USA Pickup truck would be a good candidate for a video.
A few years ago the US exempted low volume manufacturers from crash test standards. And, of course, we’ve never given a shit about pedestrians.
I think the most modern example is the Giulia SWB Zagato. Built from a regular Giulia Quadrifoglio, it has a shorter wheel base and i can only imagine how much work it required, involving directly the car maker for the most delicate chassis modifications. But the result is outstanding!
I remember watching Looney Tunes as a kid and seeing car designs like these, thinking they were more like moving sculptures than transportation... There are some beautiful pieces out there--thank you for highlighting this topic; great upload!
"aerodynamic pornography" Excellent 👌
Thank you Ed. You are never set me up. You documentary are always superb!!!
Best video yet, man...and we have similar tastes. I find this era and type of build makes the most beautiful cars ever built.
Hey Ed, thanks for sharing another interesting & informative video!!! 👍👍🙂
Cool sh!t. I had a '63 Cad hearse by S &S/H & I Love the coach built part of auto history. Great job!
Thanks for the good work as usual Ed ! Big Ups from Cape Town !
I guess some coach builders weather , might have gone into the Hot Rod and Custom Car market of the 50s and 60s Ed , and there are custom car builders who creat their own style of cars even to this day
Ed, your presentations are marvelously magnificent! I really enjoyed this one. Thank you,
Yes! This is the video I’ve been waiting for! 😁
You didn't mention the Duesenberg Model J in which a rolling chassis was purchased and a body was designed by a number of coachbuilders like Murphy, LeBaron and Rollston. Also, Budd designed a truck cab that was used by both Ford and Mack, which could lead to some confusion. Hopefully, you will create a sequel to this fine video.
We love you Ed!
Ed, your term " aerodynamic pornography " is brilliant!!!
Keep these videos coming...
There is a long standing belief that you really haven't restored a vehicle until you have restored a coach built vehicle. And I certainly agree with this. Everything is bespoke. Every part is unique and must be hand finished to fit or hand made. My Daimler Special Sports was built by Barker. The panels on one Special Sports were all numbered and they are not readily transferable across vehicles because they can be very different because the hand formed timber frame structure can be very different. Trimming and finishing takes for ever because it's so much more complex to do properly. But the cars are the prettiest Daimlers ever made. They cost sometimes 10 times a common car but they were an expression of what the finest crafts people could create.
You have a great channel and I really appreciate your programs. You also have a good voice for naration, very easy to listen to.
Great vid again
A distant relative of the coach built cars that also has come and gone, the "kit" car or dune buggy's of the 60's and 70's that used the VW type 1 platform. While not the elegant hand made creations of the 30's they, at their ridiculous peak, were nearly limitless in imagination and execution.
Great video as usual. For the page analogy, I would have said the 'body on frame' was like writing in pencil the using a rubber (yes, that what we call them in the UK) to erase the pencil and then rewrite. The 'unibody' is like the page written in pen then having to us Tippex all the page.
Bit tortured, that analogy.
I went back to a car I had back in highschool in the 80's. It was a 1979 Lincoln Mark V Cartier. But i upgraded (funny) to a 1979 Lincoln Mark V Bill Blass. Best car I ever had and the best part besides how smooth it rides is its not made of plastic.
Great content man. Cheers from Canada
Very good Ed. Quite education. It was well stated and informative. I thought about Fisher Body from GM and you showed them. I thought abiut Fleetwood which became a Cadillac. I recall the other brands you showed. Thank you for making an interesting and informative video.
Completely agree - those coach built 30s cars are stunning. Stupid Ugly Vehicles are a nasty step in evolution. Sad that those who could afford a coach built car buy a Maybach instead of investing in a unique design.
Great video :D
this was my favourite episode
I love the way this dude says “coach build”… sort of rolls the two words together smoothly, like - well - you’re cruising in a well-built coach. 😎
Coachbuilding in Indonesia has always been associated with commercial cars.
The industry reached its peak in 1980s-early 1990s where MPVs at that time had coachbuilt bodies. However, it had its drawbacks, namely they're a hassle to repair and they use quite a large amount of filler/putty.
By the time 1990s rolled around, most MPVs have original, manufacturer-built bodies, and the coachbuilders settle themselves on commissioning bodies for buses and share taxis. They do experience a form of resurgence, though, with the increased demand of bus travels, both in the forms of bus rapid transits in some major cities or premium, full-service intercity buses.
Those cars are indeed beautiful. Owning a whole warehouse full of them is obscene.
Aesthetically, I would go so far as to call some of these cars PERFECT
Great video, with one possible omission. In the 50s and 60s, the big three made a habit of regularly cranking out concept cars to wow people. I believe that most of those were coach built, and they were very high profile, even if most didn't know that Chrysler or whoever didn't actually do the body work.
The last coach built cars that were built in significant quantities were probably hearses (I know; that's another video), but that took a nosedive when Cadillac stopped selling their hearse/ambulance "commercial chassis" in 1979, and got hit further when Cadillac stopped building body-on-frame sedans for 1997 and when Lincoln stopped in 2011. Yet, chop shops continue to cut open regular sedans and turn them into fairly respectable hearses and stretched limos.
Good Episode !
Holy crap! That swan car! 😂🤣😂
Bravo! 👏
I love your videos, but there is a couple still around like Rick Dore and remember in the US there is tons of companies that build rolling chassis for custom and coach built cars. Either way still love your videos!
In the 70-80s, there were some companies like Clenet and Excalibur that were built on the chassis of American cars. They were very tacky designs, not like those elegant 30s designs. I think even the last Avanti was just a rebodied car from GM.
One design I really liked was the Volga V-12, which apparently was fitted to a BMW M6.
To clarify, the Avanti design was based on an early 60s halo car, and the last models of Avanti were build on Ford Mustangs.
No matter how you want to debate it, Art Deco is the best styling that will ever be.
The Pininfarina Benz was a unique body, although it looks like the later SEC
I used to work on classic Ferraris from the 50s, 60s, and 70s that would go to Pebble Beach Concourse shows. These were still coach built cars and it was very frustrating to work on these. Nothing from side to side was the same. A door on the left could be an inch or two longer than the right. The door sill could be higher. The door jamb trim could be completely different side to side. One tail light could be an inch higher or lower than the other side. Etc. It really made fixing them difficult, especially when they'd been crashed. And when you do body and paint work it was a constant struggle on whether you fix things so they look right, or leave it uneven like the factory did.
6:48 That is the stereotypical 30's cartoon vehicle haha
Great day! A new video!!!
In 1995 the Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts held an exposition featuring cars, some production models and custom built. A successful event but arts enthusiasts criticized the decision to put cars in an art museum.
This video would've been better if unibody cars with a spaceframe chassis got mentioned.
The pontiac fiero comes to mind most famously, other examples are the smart Roadster or the alot of the cars made by Saturn.
These cars are really well suited for kitcar bodykits and such stuff...
This is absolutely comparable with coachbuilding.
In the late Teens and early 20s, advances in steel making, shaping, and stamping led high-volume car makers away from wooden-framed body construction (the specialty of the Coachbuilders), and towards all-steel bodies. This was a first step in turning automotive Coachbuilding into a niche industry.
“Coachbuilding” existed in countries with closed borders. Like Brazil or Argentina in the 70s. Gurgel and other brazilian companies developed fiberglass cars on top of existing VW Beetle or Gol bodies. Sedan versions of Ford F150s were made there too. And Argentinian designers such as Tulio Crespi and Elvio Winograd created their own versions of existing IKA Torinos (Rambler Americans with Pininfarina designed bodies).
You should definetly make an episode in south american car industry. IKA is a great example of an american company ran by europeans (Renault) that created the car that beat the 84hs of nurburgring. And VW do Brasil had so much freedom from the germans that created amazing cars that were sold even in Europe itself.
Several limited production coachbuilders exist, some focus on reproductions of earlier cars, some build entirely new designs. Have a look at some of the race shops, and hotrod shops as well.
There are hearse variants of the mercedes w124 that got build in greece who look so beautiful that they live rent free in my mind.
I Love searching up different cars who got customized by coachbuilders...
The bertone freeclimber is another example...
A anchient Daihatsu offroader who got turned into a luxurious vehicle,
That's simply crazy to think about.
Thanks sir
Chip Foose (and probably others) comes close to modding fairly recent cars into "coach-built" cars. Not all of Chip's creations are my cup o' tea, but ya gotta admit that many are pretty dang impressive! Cheers!
GEMSTONE AUTOS....GREAT REVIEWS...GREAT PEOPLE
I've seent that Rolls Royce with the circular doors at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. The windows are in 2 pieces and retract to either side in a fan sort of way. Bonkers!
My father worked for a coachbuilder called James Young.
He had a lovely set of frech curves in the attic, the very finest wood, probably used to design some lovely bodies.
Poor bastard ended up at Fords drawing the back lights for lorries on a computer.
"Aerodynamic Pornography!" Ed, For a Nederlander, you sure have a way with the English language!
I loved that phrase and it is so true.
I need to mention LINEAGE, Harley Earl, Head of GM Design in the 40s & 50s, his father was a coach builder. Others but they escape me now.
The one at 4:24 is absolutely stunning!
It a recently build custom car 1934 packard ‘aquarius’, inspired by the art deco cars from the 30s
I was surprised affordablw VW frame kit cars weren't mentioned since that brought the cost down to something the average Joe could afford if he was willing to do himself, and the kit cars were largely a diy kit for VW frames, falls into its own category... probably there were more custom-built (morelike pseudo custom) cars using this method in the last 50 years than any other method, and I suspect the kits were made by traditional coach builders. There's enough info there with all the different kits, to have its own video. I'm hoping that was Ed's plan and we can see that happen, but this was an awesome video.
While you are correct that most of the truly remarkable coach built cars are from the '30s, they're also nearly all French. They were flamboyant almost to excess, and I agree with your assessment of the aesthetics. The Italians, I think, have the upper had as they put their flamboyant designs into regular production!
Coach built cars especially the rolls and Bentley have been around since cars started being mass produced. They still have plenty of coach builders out there
For all the shit we as enthusiasts give EVs, I feel like skateboard platforms would be perfect for coachbuilding to make a return.
Beautiful and informative as always. But I think you conflate streamlined, which is an esthetic that can be as capricious as it wants to be, and aerodynamic which is designing to a physical constraint. I very much doubt that many of those 30'ies bespoke vehicles really were particularly aerodynamic. Maybe this could be a topic for a future video?
I believe the first unibody car in mass production was the Citroen Traction Avant IN 1934
Yass ❤ Fire 🔥
I had the 1938 Talbot logo French car from Hot Wheels so beautiful waaayyy back in 1988