Only five were ever built, but they were enough to establish the Silver Arrow as one of the most beautiful cars of America’s classic era.

As much as the Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company itself, the Silver Arrow was the vision of Phillip O. Wright. Then only in his twenties but already an accomplished designer, in the spring of 1932 Wright was laid off at General Motors but with Harley Earl’s blessing to shop his work to other automakers. When he showed a scale model and renderings of his car to Roy Faulkner of Pierce-Arrow,  Faulkner pitched it to senior management at Studebaker, which then controlled Pierce-Arrow. Orders were immediately handed down to have the Silver Arrow ready for the New York Auto Show in January of 1933.

Five Silver Arrows were ultimately built, their bodies hand-formed in steel by 30 men in the Studebaker prototype shop. They included one for the New York show and another for the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, where the promotional material declared, “It gives you in 1933 the car of 1940.” In fact, the Silver Arrow did have one foot in the present and another in the future. Pierce-Arrow’s signature fender-mounted headlamps were continued but in streamlined form. Wright’s design even included traditional side-mounted spare tires, though they were hidden inside the sweeping front fenders.

The Silver Arrow rode on a conventional Pierce-Arrow chassis with a 139-inch wheelbase, powered by the company’s most powerful engine, a 462 cubic-inch V12 with 175 hp. That made it one of the most powerful cars on the American road at the time and a top speed of 115 mph was proposed, but given the Silver Arrow’s 5,700 lb curb weight that’s probably not realistic, despite its presumably aerodynamic shape.

In surveys of the Art Deco movement and its influence on automobile design, the Silver Arrow is invariably cited as a prime example, both in form and detail. The futuristic auto was among the sensations of the Chicago World’s Fair (official name: A Century of Progress International Exposition) and a cast-iron toy replica was a popular keepsake of the event. But with its hand-formed bodywork and list price of $10,000, there was no possibility that the full-sized Silver Arrow would ever be produced or sold in any real numbers.

Three of the five original Silver Arrows are still in existence today. In 1934-35, the company (by then owned by a group of home-town Buffalo businessmen) offered a production version of the Silver Arrow, but it lacked the singular style of the 1933 design. As the Great Depression killed off the market for ultra-premium cars, Pierce’s Arrow’s sales slowed to a trickle, and the company officially called it quits in 1938. One of the Classic era’s great designers, Wright adapted to changing times and later helped to create the 1953 Aero Willys.   -Photos courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.