Hemmings Classic Car – October 2019

RECAPSLETTERS Continued from page 39

To have your letter considered

for Recaps, you must include your

full name and the town/city and state

you live in. Thank you.

on page 71, then owned by Barney

Becker. Sometime later, that Doble passed

by my house, and as a very young man,

I came upon Mr. Becker and his Doble

again in Walnut Creek. During a brief

conversation, he invited me to his nearby

home and shop, an invitation I accepted.

Mr. Becker had worked for Doble as a

mechanic, and in his garage were all the

machine tools. He told me how he was

the last Doble serviceman and had rebuilt

F-30 three times.

I moved to Salt Lake City and became

a chimney sweep. One of my clients, Mrs.

Harris, found out I was a San Francisco

German, and knew about San Francisco’s

past car industry. She asked me if I had

heard of Abner Doble.

Turns out, she was his niece by

marriage and told me some interesting

things about Abner, like that he could

have done better had he not had a

troubled life with his wife, who was an

alcoholic, and his personal eccentrici-

ties. Mrs. Harris sold me an Episcopalian

Bible that had been presented to Abner’s

father, Abner Sr., by his father, Warren,

who had written on the front page a short

testimony of the divinity of the Bible and

its positive infl uence as an inspiration to

the then-young Abner Sr., dated in the

1870s. It is one of my prized antiques.

Abner Doble had also been a consul-

tant for Henschell Locomotive Works in

Kassel, Germany, during the Third Reich,

and helped produce a fl eet of steam lor-

ries, a steam speedboat, and a converted

Mercedes staff car for Hermann Goer-

ing. From there, he went to England and

acted as a consultant engineer for Sentinal

Steam Lorries—one of, if not the last,

producers of steam-powered trucks.

Jon Perry

West Valley City, Utah

YOUR PROFILE ON THE VANDERBILT

Cup in HCC #179 brought back fond

memories of my youth. In the mid-1970s,

when I was 12, my family was friends with

the artist Peter Helck. He would always

talk with me and nurture my love of old

cars. We were invited to his house to see

his collection, and I was able to sit in

“Old 16,” the fi rst American car to win

the Vanderbilt Cup. I remember it was a

monster of a car and very cool. It now sits

in The Henry Ford Museum.

Glenn Lyden

New York, New York

I GOT A KICK FROM THE OWNER

of the six-cylinder 1950 Pontiac

Chieftain, and particularly so when

he stated the Pontiac would outdo an

Oldsmobile 88 in initial acceleration. I

owned a 1951 Pontiac six-cylinder and

a 1950 Oldsmobile 88. The Pontiac may

have gotten a very brief “jump” on the

Oldsmobile, but as soon as the initial

slippage (not long) in the Hydra-Matic

was overcome, it was game over.

Ted Shannon

Mokelumne Hills, California

CARPET

CLOTH

HEADLINER

TRUNKMAT

VINYL

BIG NEWS

NEEDNEWUPHOLSTERYFORYOURCLASSICCARORTRUCK?

DOESYOURSTOCKORCUSTOMUPHOLSTERYNEEDAREFRESH?

HAVINGTROUBLEFINDINGUPHOLSTERYFORYOURPROJECT?

WWW.LARRYSTBIRD.COM

[email protected]

CALL US! 800-854-0393

POWERED BY

*Somelimitationsapply–calloremailfordetails

WHOLESALEINQUIRIESWELCOME

If youhaveyouroriginalupholsteryparts,ourprofessionalupholsterytechnicianscanproduceandsupplya high-quality,

affordablereproductioninteriorthatwillbringthat“factoryfresh”feelbacktoanymakeor modelclassiccaror truck.*

Hemmings.com I OCTOBER 2019 HEMMINGS CLASSIC CAR 41