Re: Packard Bikes
Posted by Leeedy On 2023/8/31 15:04:48
If you have been following this thread, you may recall when someone had a Packard bicycle for sale at the beginning and was seeking information.
Several claims were made about this bicycle and I attempted to correct those claims. However information I provided was ignored.
Particularly vexing was the wild claim about the handlebar stem being somehow related to a Packard Motor Car Company design. Oh!
Lately these stems keep turning up (often on the western end of the country) with still more claims. Usually people swear these are "prewar"... of course they are not.
So? Without further ado, here is a post I just made on a bicycle site where this stem has once again popped up...
==============
Ahhh. One of these stems again. One was only recently for sale on this CABE site.
These stems keep turning up and I keep identifying them... and the IDs I provide keep getting ignored. As a big hit record star that I used to perform with during my music days (we were even in the Army together) used to say to me... "Mannn... people are gonna believe what they wanna believe and say what they wanna say! You can't change it."
But I will try here one more time.
These stems are almost always claimed to be "prewar"... they are NOT. They are postwar and appeared in the late 1940s.
One of these stems showed up in recent years on a circa teens-1920s "Packard"-branded bicycle originally sold via California wholesale-distributor, Bean Son Company (BSCO). The bicycle was claimed to be authentic (it wasn't). This Packard bicycle was posted on a Packard automobile web site with a flowery description claiming the design was somehow done by Packard Motor Car Company in the early 1900s. The design of the stem was claimed as follows:
"It was built by The Bean & Son Company of San Francisco, CA to follow the design of the Packard automobile with the goose neck handle bar stem being made from aluminum (precious metal at the time) and to have the lines of the cormorant feathers at it's sides like the hood ornament of the Packard automobile. "
A ridiculously absurd claim. The bicycle in question was NOT "built by Bean & Son Company." It was wholesaled and distributed by (not built by) Bean Son Company– NOT "Bean & Son" (no such company). And the stem had absolutely ZERO connection to Packard Motor Car Company, nor any or their designs. This is pure hallucination. (see attached photo).
But like so many others in the bicycle history world where often the blind are leading the blind and anybody can make up and say anything... people actually believed this outrageous fantasy.
I tried to correct the "information" online... and my correction and accurate identification were –as usual– ignored. The Packard bicycle (which also had postwar girl's J.C. Higgins parts) later turned up in San Francisco and was auctioned off. For a hefty price. All with the silly story for the stem intact and my corrections again, ignored!
I suspect like my Japanese "DuJee" aluminum bicycles, these stems were made of scrap and surplus aluminum left over from World War II. DuJees were made of aluminum intended for Japanese Mitsubishi "Zero" fighter aircraft. Likewise I believe these stems and other postwar American-made bicycles and items of the 1940s came from a similar American source. I won't go into the minutia of why here in this thread.
How do I know about these stems? I've been collecting and saving bicycle history for a lot of years. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, I saw quite a few of these stems on bicycles... and for sale in shops. I bought several and kept them. This, of course was a long, long time ago.
These special aluminum stems were made by a company on what used to be known as Detroit's "East Side." The company was located on Gratiot Avenue. The name of the company was Midway Machine and Tool Company. Advertisements for these stems first began to appear in bicycle industry trade magazines in the late 1940s. I am attaching an original ad for this stem from a 1947 issue of American Bicyclist & Motorcyclist magazine (yes, we have most issues from 1920s through the 1970s with many in original bound volumes). This stem was also advertised in other bicycle trade publications like Bicycle Journal (we also have every BJ issue in bound volumes from beginning to end). I also interviewed an engineer involved with making these stems decades ago.
I had about 50 of these stems in boxes I saved and brought out to California in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, these all disappeared when my buildings were robbed over 20 years ago. Over the years since, these aftermarket Detroit-made aluminum stems continue turning up on the western end of the country. Often with crazy stories of what they are.
So if anyone on the planet today knows these stems, it would be me.
Leon Dixon
National Bicycle History Archive of America
(NBHAA.com)
Attach file:
1_515b313238107.jpg (15.47 KB)
AlumBicycleStemDetroit.jpeg (430.96 KB)
Several claims were made about this bicycle and I attempted to correct those claims. However information I provided was ignored.
Particularly vexing was the wild claim about the handlebar stem being somehow related to a Packard Motor Car Company design. Oh!
Lately these stems keep turning up (often on the western end of the country) with still more claims. Usually people swear these are "prewar"... of course they are not.
So? Without further ado, here is a post I just made on a bicycle site where this stem has once again popped up...
==============
Ahhh. One of these stems again. One was only recently for sale on this CABE site.
These stems keep turning up and I keep identifying them... and the IDs I provide keep getting ignored. As a big hit record star that I used to perform with during my music days (we were even in the Army together) used to say to me... "Mannn... people are gonna believe what they wanna believe and say what they wanna say! You can't change it."
But I will try here one more time.
These stems are almost always claimed to be "prewar"... they are NOT. They are postwar and appeared in the late 1940s.
One of these stems showed up in recent years on a circa teens-1920s "Packard"-branded bicycle originally sold via California wholesale-distributor, Bean Son Company (BSCO). The bicycle was claimed to be authentic (it wasn't). This Packard bicycle was posted on a Packard automobile web site with a flowery description claiming the design was somehow done by Packard Motor Car Company in the early 1900s. The design of the stem was claimed as follows:
"It was built by The Bean & Son Company of San Francisco, CA to follow the design of the Packard automobile with the goose neck handle bar stem being made from aluminum (precious metal at the time) and to have the lines of the cormorant feathers at it's sides like the hood ornament of the Packard automobile. "
A ridiculously absurd claim. The bicycle in question was NOT "built by Bean & Son Company." It was wholesaled and distributed by (not built by) Bean Son Company– NOT "Bean & Son" (no such company). And the stem had absolutely ZERO connection to Packard Motor Car Company, nor any or their designs. This is pure hallucination. (see attached photo).
But like so many others in the bicycle history world where often the blind are leading the blind and anybody can make up and say anything... people actually believed this outrageous fantasy.
I tried to correct the "information" online... and my correction and accurate identification were –as usual– ignored. The Packard bicycle (which also had postwar girl's J.C. Higgins parts) later turned up in San Francisco and was auctioned off. For a hefty price. All with the silly story for the stem intact and my corrections again, ignored!
I suspect like my Japanese "DuJee" aluminum bicycles, these stems were made of scrap and surplus aluminum left over from World War II. DuJees were made of aluminum intended for Japanese Mitsubishi "Zero" fighter aircraft. Likewise I believe these stems and other postwar American-made bicycles and items of the 1940s came from a similar American source. I won't go into the minutia of why here in this thread.
How do I know about these stems? I've been collecting and saving bicycle history for a lot of years. Growing up in Detroit, Michigan, I saw quite a few of these stems on bicycles... and for sale in shops. I bought several and kept them. This, of course was a long, long time ago.
These special aluminum stems were made by a company on what used to be known as Detroit's "East Side." The company was located on Gratiot Avenue. The name of the company was Midway Machine and Tool Company. Advertisements for these stems first began to appear in bicycle industry trade magazines in the late 1940s. I am attaching an original ad for this stem from a 1947 issue of American Bicyclist & Motorcyclist magazine (yes, we have most issues from 1920s through the 1970s with many in original bound volumes). This stem was also advertised in other bicycle trade publications like Bicycle Journal (we also have every BJ issue in bound volumes from beginning to end). I also interviewed an engineer involved with making these stems decades ago.
I had about 50 of these stems in boxes I saved and brought out to California in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, these all disappeared when my buildings were robbed over 20 years ago. Over the years since, these aftermarket Detroit-made aluminum stems continue turning up on the western end of the country. Often with crazy stories of what they are.
So if anyone on the planet today knows these stems, it would be me.
Leon Dixon
National Bicycle History Archive of America
(NBHAA.com)
Attach file:
1_515b313238107.jpg (15.47 KB) AlumBicycleStemDetroit.jpeg (430.96 KB)
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