01
Origins
By 1913 Pierce-Arrow of Buffalo stood at the very top of American motoring, builder of enormous sixes for the White House and the industrial aristocracy. That year the company patented its defining gesture: headlamps faired into the tops of the front fenders rather than hung between them — better light placement, and an unmistakable face that Pierce would wear for the rest of its life. The smaller sixes of this era carried the same fanatical construction as the giant 66 — cast-aluminium body panels, vanadium steel, engineering without a price ceiling — in dimensions a chauffeur could manage in town. Pierce never chased volume; it sold certainty to people who already had everything. The fender lamps outlived the company, which succumbed in 1938, and remain the quickest way to identify one of America's noblest cars.
111-SC- - NARA · Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided · Public domain
