PeerlessV-16

01

Origins

By 1932 Peerless had built its last production car, and its farewell was extraordinary: a one-off V16 prototype with a lightweight aluminium body by Murphy of Pasadena, intended to relaunch the marque at the very summit of the market alongside Cadillac's sixteen. The Depression made the plan absurd, and Peerless's directors saw a better use for a large Cleveland factory with excellent plumbing: the end of Prohibition was coming. The company re-equipped the plant, took a licence to brew Carling's Black Label, and never built another car — the only American luxury marque to become a brewery. The solitary V16, preserved today, is one of the great might-have-beens: proof that Peerless could still engineer with the best, attached to a company wise enough not to try.