See how a fascinating variety of vehicles compare to the well-rounded 1935 Chevrolet in this classic Jam Handy film.
As the title Balance might suggest, the purpose of this great little Jam Handy film from 1935 is to show how a good passenger car needs to balance a number of attributes: speed, power, comfort, economy, and so on. To demonstrate, the film provides entertaining examples of the extremes of each property: race cars at Indianapolis, an army tank, Sir Malcolm Campbell’s Bluebird LSR racer at Daytona Beach, and a giant motor coach. By the way, the coach is Carcajou, the fabulously custom-built GMC commissioned by Paul Seiler, the president the General Motors Truck and Coach division. Later it was owned by Buick general manager E.T. Strong.
Since the film is short on info on the 1935 Chevolet itself, we’ll fill you in. There were two distinct model lines that year, Standard (EC, 107-in wheelbase) and Master DeLuxe (ED/EA,113-in wheelbase). Both were powered by Chevrolet’s famed stovebolt six with 74 hp and 80 hp, respectively. The Master DeLuxe EA featured GM’s Dubonnet-style Knee Action independent front suspension, a controversial but important advance. (See our feature on Knee Action here.) Now on to this fascinating glimpse at the extreme motor vehicles of 1935. Video below.
Great Jam Handy sampler. The segment following the light sedan on a divided highway must have required closing the lane to traffic to allow the camera car to run against traffic direction. Looked like Lakeshore in Grosse Pointes
WOW that motor coach is wild. Is it possible to give us a feature?
A lovely film and in really good condition, too. It’s quite a clever concept; I guess even as early as 1935, telling people about a car’s features and benefits would have been a bit old hat. Much more memorable would be a series of unusual scenes illustrating the car’s features – the hope being that the potential customer would then go and find out more.
It was an unusual treat to be able to watch this on full screen without it pixelating into a blur!
My wife’s grandfather, Frank Goldman was a film director at Jam Handy and according to another grandchild, he produced this film. No Jam Handy films showed credits.