HupmobileModel E

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Origins

The Model E of 1925 belongs to Hupmobile's best years, when the Detroit firm sold over 100,000 cars annually and its reputation for sound engineering stood as high as any medium-priced American make. The E's straightforward specification — a robust four, decent brakes, honest construction — was the point: Hupp's customers were repeat buyers who valued the absence of drama. The company's eight-cylinder cars soon pushed upmarket, and handsome Loewy-styled models followed in the thirties, but the mid-twenties fours represent the marque's centre of gravity. Hupmobile's later decline — style gambles, the Cord-based Skylark venture, the end in 1940 — has left it a name mostly for historians. The cars themselves, where they survive, still start, run and stop with the unfussy competence that built the name.