Tuesday 27th December 1927
The Paige-Detroit Motor Car Company was reorganised as the Graham-Paige Motors Corporation. The company’s initial offering included a line of Graham-Paige cars with six- and eight-cylinder engines. For a while a line of light trucks was offered under the Paige name, soon discontinued when Dodge reminded the Grahams about the non-competition agreement they had signed as part of the sale of the Graham Brothers Company. Grahams earned a reputation for quality and sales quickly rose. Graham also had some success in racing, which helped boost sales. The Graham company logo included profiles of the three brothers and was used in insignia on the cars including badges and taillight lens.
Graham-Paige made most of their own bodies and engines. The Graham brothers had solved a long-standing Paige body supply dilemma by purchasing the Wayne Body Company in Wayne, Michigan and expanding the factory along with other body plants. They did not have a foundry and contracted with Continental for these services relative to their engines. Some models did use Continental stock engines. Graham-Paige’s own engineering department designed most of the engines used in Graham-Paige cars. The 1938–1940 “Spirit of Motion” cars and Hollywood models are frequently incorrectly stated to use Continental engines. After World War II Continental produced a lesser version of Graham-Paige’s 217-cubic-inch-displacement engine used in the previously mentioned models. These engines were used in the post-war Kaiser and Frazer automobiles.
Initially, Graham-Paige withstood the onset of the depression well, but sales fell as the decade wore on. The 1932 models were designed by Amos Northup. This particular design has been noted as the “single most influential design in automotive history.” The new 8-cylinder engine was called the “Blue Streak.” However, the press and public quickly adopted the name “Blue Streak” for the cars themselves. The design introduced a number of innovative ideas. The most copied was the enclosed fenders, thus covering the mud and grime built up on the underside. The radiator cap was moved under the hood, which itself was later modified to cover the cowl, and end at the base of the windshield.
For engineering, the rear kickup on the chassis frame was eliminated by the adoption of a ‘banjo’ frame. Unlike contemporary practice, the rear axle was placed through large openings on both sides of the frame, with rubber snubbers to absorb any shock if the car axle should make contact. This in turn permitted a wider body. To help lower the car, the rear springs were mounted on the outer sides of the chassis frame and not under the frame. This idea was eventually copied by other manufacturers – Chrysler, for example, in 1957.
For 1934, Graham introduced a crankshaft-driven supercharger. At first offered only in the top eight-cylinder models, when the eights were dropped for 1936, the supercharger was adapted to the six. The unit was designed in-house by Graham Assistant Chief Engineer Floyd F. Kishline. It was an original design, not a Switzer-Cummins or Duesenberg design. Through the years, Graham would produce more supercharged cars than any other automobile manufacturer until Buick surpassed them in the 1990s.
By 1935, the “Blue Streak” styling was getting rather dated. A restyling of the front and rear ends for 1935 proved to be a disaster, making the cars appear higher and narrower. Having no money for a new body, Graham signed an agreement with Reo Motor Car Company to purchase car bodies, paying Reo $7.50 in royalties for each Hayes-built body. The engines did have new full water jackets. Graham added new front end styling and revised detailing to these bodies to create the 1936 and 1937 Grahams.
Amos Northup of Murray Body was hired to design a new model for 1938, but he died before the design was complete. It is believed the final design was completed by Graham engineers. The new 1938 Graham was introduced with the slogan “Spirit of Motion”. The fenders, wheel openings and grille all appeared to be moving forward. The design was widely praised in the American press and by American designers. It also won the prestigious Concours D’Elegance in Paris, France. Wins were also recorded in the Prix d’Avant-Garde at Lyon, the Prix d’Elegance at Bordeaux, and the Grand Prix d’Honneur at Deauville, France. Its cut-back grille later gained the car the name “sharknose”, which appears to have origins in the 1950s. The styling was a complete flop in sales. The most reliable estimates, from period publications, suggest the total production of all 3 years of these cars is between 6000 and 13,000 units. With this low production Graham limped through 1939 and 1940.
