‘COME enjoy a new kind of performance. A performance in the tempo of tomorrow, that completely shadows all your present conceptions of fine car travel. A super-performance made possible in Franklin alone, by the new supercharged, air-cooled, twelve cylinder airplane engine.’
That was the text of one of the ads for the Franklin Twelve in the early 1930s.
It was pretty accurate too, for in a then world of Packards, Duesenbergs and Pierce-Arrows, there are some classics that have had their praises gone unsung.
One of these is the Franklin Twelve, the ultimate product of the Syracuse, New York, carmaker, founded in 1902, that had made its name in fascinating engineering — most prominently their air-cooled engines designed by aircraft engineer F Glen Shoemaker, of Aircooled Motors, also based in Syracuse.
One of them has just been sold at R M Sotheby’s in the US. The auction was by sealed lot, which means the amount is never disclosed.
But the car had a guiding price of US$150,000-200,000 (AU$217,000-290,000) and in June, a similar car was sold by Bonhams for US$313,600 (AU$453,000).
Franklins were always special, but ‘the banker’s car,’ built at the behest of the financiers who had taken over the company, was something beyond wonderful.
It was an exceptional piece of craftsmanship by any standard.
At its heart was a fabulous 6.4-litre V12.
It had individually finned cast-iron cylinders mounted on an aluminium crankcase, with aluminium cylinder heads.
In fact, Franklin was for some time reckoned to be the largest user of aluminium in the world.
Cooling was via a Sirocco-type fan mounted at the nose of the crankshaft, which directed airflow through carefully engineered steel shrouding.
It was naturally aspirated, with enhanced airflow assistance, which some reports mistakenly described as an ‘unusual supercharger system.’
It nestled in a robustly built chassis, surrounded by handmade bodywork, crafted in the Syracuse factory to an elegant LeBaron design, that was virtually all-steel, save for wooden body sills.
As often happened in the Classic Era, Franklin’s finest product was built in the company’s waning days.
Intended as a flagship competitor to other multi-cylinder luxury cars of the era, the Twelve arrived too late during the Great Depression, which contributed to the company’s demise.
Money was lost on every Twelve, but every one of the 212 made was an amazing piece of work.
With 150 hp, (110kW), they boasted exceptional performance up to 90 mph (about 145km/h) with wonderful drivability, and outstanding build quality from nose to tail.
They were decidedly among the best American cars of their generation.
The tragedy for the company, founded in 1902, was that so few of the Twelves were built.
Today the H H Franklin Club records show only 16 surviving Twelves, most of them in long-term ownership in museums and private collections, in some instances for several decades.
It is testament to the car that the people who buy them, do not sell them.
A Twelve bought is a Twelve kept, as has been the case with this example now for 37 years.
The only surviving Twelve limousine, this car was formerly part of the famed Harrah’s Automobile Collection.
It is believed it was acquired, in largely intact, in the Independence, Ohio, area in the 1960s, having been used for many years in livery service.
The restoration of this Twelve was undertaken by Thomas Hubbard of Tucson, Arizona, a renowned historian of the company’s products.
A 1973 issue of the Franklin Club’s Air-Cooled News, reported that the restoration of the only known Twelve limousine had “cost about double what the usual rough Franklin restoration has run . . . and is now a magnificent showpiece.”
When the Harrah’s collection was broken up in the mid-1980s, the limousine was sold at the landmark 1984 auction, where it was bought by a German collector before being acquired for the present collection.
While car production did not survive, Aircooled Motors of Syracuse continued building their engines for commercial and aircraft use and Franklin engines powered numerous light planes as well as most early American-built helicopters..
After World War II the company was bought by Preston Tucker.
The flat-six engines were fitted with water-cooling jackets and used in the short lived Tucker 48 sedan.
The company was sold again after Tucker was disbanded.
But somewhere in the US, someone now drives a magnificent Franklin Twelve.
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