Foreword: A few months ago I became interested in the coachbuilder Charles Schutte (pronounced Shut-ee). Mr. Schutte built car bodies in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but I had no idea where. I posed a question to those on "The Lancastrian" Facebook page and shortly I had several answers. The Rev. Stanley Imboden, former minister at St. James Episcopal Church in downtown Lancaster, where I am a member, posted that his son Alton had bought and renovated a house in the 800 block of Marion Street and recalled a taxi company in that vicinity that had their cars serviced by a small automobile maker of auto bodies, but not engines. Ah, Ha! I was able to trace the Schutte Body Company to 137 East Marion Street. But then in 1926 they left that location and moved their business to a building at 616 South West End Avenue. That building still exists today as an apartment building. My following story, told in two parts, tells the story of one of the most successful businesses in Lancaster at that time.
It was an ordinary day. It was on August 24, 2015 that I wrote a story about my visit to the Lancaster Historical Society to see the 1924 Oldsmobile they had on display in their museum. The car's body had been made by the Charles Schutte Body Corporation which was located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Since that date I have been doing some research on the company and have found some remarkable information about the company. Back in the early motoring days, before line production existed, the process of acquiring a new vehicle was a bit more complex that it is today.
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| An example of a rolling chasis |
The customer would first have to buy a rolling chassis. This rolling chassis would be comprised of the substruc- ture (the base frame of the motor vehicle or other wheeled conveyance), drivetrain (the engine, gearbox, differential, axles and wheels), suspension, steering system and radiator. After one would buy a chassis, they would have to find a coachbuilder and request a personal body design to be fitted on their purchased rolling chassis. Coachwork is the body of an automobile, bus, horse-drawn passenger vehicle or even railroad passenger car. At the turn of the previous century, many people thought of automobiles as horse and buggies, just without the horses. The term horsepower today goes way back to when horses were used to power vehicles.
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| The body of many cars was at one time made of wood. |
It was not unusual for a coach- builder to buy his own chassis and manufac- ture the vehicle using his own creative designs ideas. Due to the huge expense of making suitable machinery to make metal cars, wooden cars were frequently designed by many coachbuilders.
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Interior of a wooden coach showing wooden slats that
fabric would be stretched over for the roof of the car. |
A well-equipped woodworking shop capable of masterfully repairing trim or reproducing entire body frames was a busy place. Master craftsmen were needed to handle wood production as well as restoration work. Wasn't long before sheet metal shops began to make the bodies, but at times working in conjunction with a woodworking shop. Eventually when cars started coming off a rolling line, some customers would still take the complete factory car to a coachbuilder to have modifications made on it.
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This is a rolling chassis with body made by Duesenberg-Schutte.
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An example would be the Bugatti Automobile Company who produced a rolling chassis as well as a complete coach- worked car as did the Rolls-Royce company. After WWII automobile mass production became mainstream and put many of the coach builders out of business. Tomorrow I will tell the story of The Charles Schutte Body Company which was a small commercial body builder founded in 1910. It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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