The mysterious Noma: a speedster fit for a mobster

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If this isn’t a striking image of a similarly striking car, we don’t know what is. Unfortunately, there's very little information about it. The original image comes from a glass negative, which was gifted to the Library of Congress collection in 1947 by a man named Herbert A. French. The library lists it as ‘Noma? Car, 1920’. We think it’s safe to say the marque indeed is Noma as the name is well visible on the radiator badge.

Although the car here wears a Washington D.C. plate and 'NoMa' is the colloquial name for an industrial area (‘North Of Massachusetts Avenue) in that very city, the Noma Motors Corporation hailed from New York, we understand. The marque first appeared there in 1919 with its two-seater speedster and four-seater ‘close-coupled phaeton’, both using straight-six engines. This here is the speedster, very sleek due to the lack of running boards, with only step plates instead. Alas, Noma lasted just a handful of years—the curtain fell as early as 1923. One source mentions that "An estimated total of 625 Nomas was built." That seems a reasonable number, but there can't be many survivors, can there?

Perhaps there is one, as the same source says: “Some time after 2000 an enthusiast was searching in an old, closed down salvage yard. In a shed was a 1922 Noma car, with a restored chassis and the body still intact but off the car. The grandson of the yard’s founder confirmed that it was a one-owner car that had belonged to Jack ‘Legs’ Diamond, the mobster. The car had been impounded from his hideout in 1933 after his murder and had been stored since.”

We’d certainly love to see pictures of it!

Words: Jeroen Booij; picture: Library of Congress
 

This article was originally published on March 22, 2024

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