Quiz Archive
About Quiz # 275: 1928 McLaughlin Buick
We expected to receive a lot of response on this quiz, as this is a well known “special”. But no, only five of you came up with the answers: Jeff Lee, John Jarrett, Luk Martens, Hugh Nutting and jury member Ian Hayhurst. From those we chose as winner Luk Martens from Belgium who told us all we wanted to know: “This is a 1928 McLaughlin-Buick, specially built for the visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada. Early in the 20th century, McLaughlin was one of the first in Canada specializing in building car bodies. He became a personal friend and business partner of William Durant, founder of GM. His company became "General Motors of Canada" in 1918, even assembling Chevrolets. Apart from the badges and wheel hubs, there's little difference between Canadian and US-made Buicks, although McLaughlin provided some specific bodies not available in the US. These were mainly exported to British commonwealth markets, thus with right-hand drive. Not so with this one, which stayed in Canada. Two specials were built and they exist to this day. The car on the picture resides in the storage room of the Canadian Science & Technology Museum, painted light beige with green accents.” Well done Luk! In fact, the McLaughlin Buick has just come out of storage and will be part of the museum's new display called "In Search of the Canadian Car". See you all next week with a new quiz!
(photo and quiz idea
Richard Spiegelman)
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Friday, 28 May 2010
We expected to receive a lot of response on this quiz, as this is a well known “special”. But no, only five of you came up with the answers: Jeff Lee, John Jarrett, Luk Martens, Hugh Nutting and jury member Ian Hayhurst. From those we chose as winner Luk Martens from Belgium who told us all we wanted to know: “This is a 1928 McLaughlin-Buick, specially built for the visit of the Prince of Wales to Canada. Early in the 20th century, McLaughlin was one of the first in Canada specializing in building car bodies. He became a personal friend and business partner of William Durant, founder of GM. His company became "General Motors of Canada" in 1918, even assembling Chevrolets. Apart from the badges and wheel hubs, there's little difference between Canadian and US-made Buicks, although McLaughlin provided some specific bodies not available in the US. These were mainly exported to British commonwealth markets, thus with right-hand drive. Not so with this one, which stayed in Canada. Two specials were built and they exist to this day. The car on the picture resides in the storage room of the Canadian Science & Technology Museum, painted light beige with green accents.” Well done Luk! In fact, the McLaughlin Buick has just come out of storage and will be part of the museum's new display called "In Search of the Canadian Car". See you all next week with a new quiz!
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Diamond Jubilee of Confederation sites has a link to this car calling it a 1927. Do to the Motor Vehicle tax laws, most of the exported McLaughlin-Buicks would have been the Standard series to lower the road taxes. And more than likely many of the ones delivered in Australia and NZ had locally built bodies. Holden and others made very good copies of North American production cars. BTW in this period Slone asked Sam McLaughlin to take his car away from the New York Auto Show because the coachwork was so much better that the Fisher American models.
Model year 1928 run (as usually) from Aug 1st 1927 to July 31st 1928, so in August 1st must have been few thousands cars already built for market launch. Per production records Flint (US) built 2 seven pass tourings under designation 28-49, much more of them were built in Canada as McLauglin Buick, probably few thousands. My 1928 McLaughlin Part List for Master Series shows few thousands exceptions when ordering upholstering and trim materials for 29-49 models ONLY. I have positively identified 5 of them still in existence, below are serial numbers and engine numbers for 4 of them.
Note that the sequence of McLaughlin serial numbers (lowest first) of these 4 cars (138575, 139645, 140099, 140320) and the sequence of their respective engines (2013551, 2034106, 2080521, 2091312) is the same, that corresponds Flint engines shipping to Canada.
unfortunately I missed this quiz as my computer was down last weekend. In fact the specials built on Master Six chassis (128 inch wheelbase, 6 cylinder OHV of 274 ci, type designation 28-49 that is 7 passenger touring) were built at least 3, 3 of them are known to exist. The Canadian car (Serial# 139645 engine# 2034106), one is India (Serial# 138575 engine# 2013551) and the third one in United Kingdom (serial# 140099 engine# 2080521). I own 28-49 (Serial# 140320 engine# 2091312). More detailed discussion is at http://forums.aaca.org/f165/1928-mclaughlin-prague-257454.html
Josef