Ronald Andrew’s almost all original 100-hp, 4.5 liter, air-cooled 1931 Franklin Sport Touring at the Gathering of the Faithful.
Getting in the back seat of a dual-cowl phaeton like this 1931 Franklin Sport Touring “Pursuit” isn’t as easy as opening the door and hopping in, or so we learned at the 16th Annual Gathering of the Faithful—a show attracting mostly hot rods and other stripes of vintage performance cars—in Middleborough, Massachusetts.
Although I was technically “on vacation” (can an automotive journalist really be on vacation at a car show?), I couldn’t resist snapping a couple photos and some video of what proved to be a daily driver owned by Ronald Andrew of Middleborough, Massachusetts, because we were just wrapping up the January issue (#136) of Hemmings Classic Car that contains an article on the history of dual-cowl phaetons.
This body style, while short-lived—it was in vogue for just 25 years—nonetheless epitomizes what we think of when we imagine big, classic, open luxury cars. At the time of its development, open touring cars and their racier cousins the phaetons were popular, but more and more their owners wanted to be comfortable at the same time they were appearing sporty. One concession to that comfort was a “tonneau windshield” for the rear-seated passengers, a mechanism which mounted to the back of the front seat and could be scissored into position just in front of the passengers’ faces.
According to Walt Gosden in his HCC article, the first fully developed dual-cowl phaeton was designed in 1915 by James Frank de Causse—an American formerly of Kellner Freres Carrosserie in Paris—who had been hired by Locomobile to head up the first custom body department in the United States.
Franklins were constructed with many aluminum parts, including the hinged rear cowl. The body on this example was fabricated by Walker Body of Amesbury, Massachusetts.
De Causse’s design differed from the “tonneau windshield” in that it offered rear-seat passengers greater protection from the elements by adding a second cowl to more completely shield their legs. This cowl also had the added benefit of providing a more stable platform for affixing a wind- and bug-deflecting rear windshield.
For more details about the history of the dual-cowl phaeton, pick up a copy of the January 2016 issue of Hemmings Classic Car, now on sale at better newsstands.
To see how the rear cowl mechanism works on one of these distinctive automobiles, watch this video of Ronald Andrew demonstrating it on the Franklin he’s put over 200,000 miles on since purchasing it in 1954:
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