He’s The Audubon Of The Automobile

Article from Popular Mechanics February 1949  – Found at modernmechanix.com
C. P. Hornung stalks the rare and early birds of motordom and draws their portraits – By George H. Waltz Jr.

Americans scarcely knew one bird from another, unless they were edible, until John James Audubon painted their portraits, exact to the tiniest speckled feather. Now a whole generation of car-loving Americans is getting acquainted with the gaudy and gleaming automobiles of the past and some of them very rare birds indeed because a modern Audubon is drawing painstakingly authentic pictures of them. Clarence P. Hornung of New York City, whose gallery of America’s earliest cars already includes 75 portraits, didn’t take up the hobby that has become his booming business until 1949. Until then he was an industrial artist and specialist in creating trademarks and package designs.

Hunting for details of an old car, Hornung pauses in mid-drawing to check catalogues, ads and specification lists

One Saturday in September, 1949, Hornung happened for the first time to visit James Melton’s Museum of Antique to find that no drawings or prints of them were available. No one up till then had ever made a pictorial history of the American automobile.
By the following Monday, Hornung had decided to create that history himself. He plunged into a program of research that in the following months took him to book shops, print dealers, catalogue collectors and old-time car salesmen. He gathered a mounting pile of flyblown catalogues, yellowed newspaper and magazine ads, specification lists and old photographs.
Soon he was armed with enough information to produce his first eight portraits: an 1877 Selden, an 1895 Duryea, an 1896 Ford, an 1898 Winton, an 1899 Packard, a 1902 Autocar, a 1903 Olds-mobile and a 1903 Cadillac. When collared prints of them had been run off, Hornung offered them for sale in a few small ads in New York newspapers.
The response was astonishing. Hundreds of orders cascaded upon his studio. In two months he sold 2,000 sets. Suddenly he was researcher, artist, publisher, mail-order clerk and shipping clerk all rolled into one.
Happily surrendering to the avid demands of old-car fans, Hornung went back to the “scrap” pile and the drawing board and began producing more portraits of the ancestors of today’s automobiles. To date, 47 prints have been made from the 75 drawings he has completed. He plans to finish 25 additional drawings by 1955.
Audubon, wandering in search of bird-life, encountered such feathered eccentrics as White-Eyed Flycatchers and Tell-Tale Godwits. Hornung, in his entertaining research, has happened upon the Auto Bug, the Izzer, the O-We-Go, the Static Super, the Quick and the Zip.

Hornung’s “collector’s prints” have been exhibited in museums and libraries all over the U.S. Reproductions of his drawings decorate glassware, lacquered trays, coasters, Christmas cards even silk scarves.

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The 12 Finest American Classics – A Portfolio of Ageless Cars

Based on an article in “Popular Mechanics”  – Feb 1954   – Found at modernmechanix.com

On 8 pages, Popular Mechanics saluted the Classics among the Classics. 12 American automobiles were chosen as the finest produced in that golden era defined as the period from 1925 to 1942.

Ranked in the order of their selection, the Classics are portrayed here in true color by Popular Mechanics photographs and sketches. The roll of honor:

1. Duesenberg 1931-J Roadster-Murphy 2. Duesenberg 1931-J Victoria-Rollston 3. Lincoln 1932-KB Phaeton Dual Cowl 4. Packard 1929 Sport Phaeton 5. Pierce Arrow 1933 Silver Arrow V12 6. Stutz 1932 Super Bearcat

7. Cord 1937 Convertible Coupe 8. Packard 1930 Speedster 9. Kissel 1927 White Eagle Speedster 10. Auburn 1936 Supercharged Speedster 11. Marmon 1931 V16 Club Sedan 12. Lincoln 1941 Continental Convertible

The years 1925 to 1942, in the minds of Classic Car fans, delineate the era in which the motor car had attained mechanical excellence, having thrown off all the heritage of the horse-drawn buggy, and had not yet passed into the hands of the stylist.

These 12 cars, honored here as pre-eminent among their kind, are no museum pieces. Proud owners still operate and maintain them, some in their original paint, certainly most in their original hue, and as much as possible in their pristine operating conditions without the multiplicity of gadgets and chrome and automatic mechanisms of present-day cars.

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