 What Alex Watt thinks is a 1901 Peerless automobile in a Florida front yard
Peerless Chainless
Touring Cars -- $2,800 to $11,000
Built to stand all tests, each car is as
Luxurious as a Turkish divan, as reliable
As a chronometer, as perfect as human
Ingenuity can make it.
With the chainless gear
There’s naught to fear!--1904 newspaper ad
To anybody else, it looked like a junked soapbox derby entry, draped in Florida weeds. But not to Alex Watt. The acting head of the Planning Branch’s Regional Planning Section sees both the past and the future. “I saw a lot there,” the native Scot recalls of his first glimpse of what he suspects is a 1901 Peerless, loaded with history, memories and a promise of what can be. Watt had bought what was left of the vintage car on eBay from an estate in Florida. The car reportedly had run as recently as 20 years ago, but it had been parked on a front lawn for a long time. So over the Memorial Day weekend, Watt drove his pickup truck 4,700 round-trip miles over 4 ½ days to fetch the 4-foot-wide, 7-foot-long vehicle. It fit nicely in the bed. Why such exertions for what amounted to little more than the ghost of a machine? Watt, who has forged almost a second career restoring old cars, recognized the historic value of the 103-year-old relic. Based in Cleveland, Ohio, Peerless began in the 19th century as a bicycle maker. In 1900, according to an eponymous Web site, Peerless started importing De Dion engines and chassis from France, making its own bodies. “The first Peerless Motorette was displayed at the New York auto show in November 1900,” the Web site relates. Less than a year later, Peerless displayed a 2-cylinder car and quickly expanded both horsepower and designs. In 1904 the legendary Barney Oldfield was hired as a racer.  Watt hauled the old car in his pickup truck back to Los Angeles “You seldom see a Peerless car today,” the Web site states. “They are very rare. They were a limited production luxury car and were one of the more expensive cars sold in the USA.” Watt reckons fewer than 150 cars were made in 1901, and only a handful of photographs remain of them. “It’s as if their early cars disappeared off the face of the earth,” he says. Except for the one in his garage. From the time he unloaded it at his home, Watt has proceeded like an automotive Sherlock Holmes--searching libraries, asking car club members, plumbing online sites—trying to detect the elusive Peerless. Even when he first saw it on eBa7, there was no nameplate and he identified the marque only because of its unique tiller steering (no wheel) and chain drive from the transmission to the rear wheel. Within a year or two, that system had been replaced by the more conventional one described in the 1904 ad. (eBay is a very unusual way to acquire an early car, as most are located by word of mouth or through ads placed in automobile club newsletters.) Now that his quarry is safely ensconced, Watt must doff the tweed Deerstalker and don his restorer’s cap. “Right now I’m still taking pictures,” he says, “making a list, checking it twice.”  The possible Peerless next to a Volvo wagon He’ll be using similar methods as those used by the original Peerless blacksmiths who put the first cars together by hand, since there was no assembly line. “They’d try different things on different cars,” Watt explains. “If it worked, it worked. If not, they’d change it the next time.” Compared to the 1936 Riley Lynx which he’s still working on, or the 1922 Model T Ford or the 1961 Aston Martin DB4 that he’s finished, the ’01 Peerless “will be an easier,” he says. Watt easily envisions the refinished Peerless product: “It’s going to be exciting as hell driving that thing down the road since the top speed is only about 25 miles per hour. It will be really different driving.” Move over, Barney Oldfield. |
