Anyway, a quick flick through one issue last week had an article about a one-off creation which still exists but which I'd never heard of before. Information seems pretty scant on the internet about it, so I thought I'd write out the article in full with accompanying images courtesy of various Flickr users. From WHEELS magazine, September 1969:
The incredible, and slightly sad, story of the marvel nobody wanted to buy....
THE COPPER CAR
That Philip Lewis was eccentric there is no doubt. Anyone who would call himself a radiatorologist would have to be. That he hated traffic cops is a fact. He wrote a dozen poems about them and their "terror tactics". And that was in 1947 when parking spots were a lot easier to find in the main street of Auckland NZ than they are today.
But Philip Lewis will really go down in history for (if he ever goes down in history for anything, that is) will be the invention of the Copper Car. An invention for which, sadly, the world was not ready.
Philip Lewis came to build NZ's (and probably the world's) first copper car in a roundabout way. Born in Birmingham, England, he took his first job with a metal craftsman. There he learnt to beat copper into various shapes. Next he joined Daimler as a panel beater and, after a time, moved on to be a foreman making Armstrong-Whitworth cars. When production ceased, he took up singing. A talent scout spotted him one night and offered him the then princely sum of $16 to go to NZ with the Kings College (London) Choir.
We next come across Lewis some years later touring the Australian outback as a pierrot troupe manager and a singer in a masked group called the "Scarlet Mysteries". Soon after he married, settled in NZ and, on his wife's suggestion, went into the radiator repair business. But not as any old radiator repairman. Philip Lewis, with his theatrical touch, insisted he was a radiatorologist. Then in 1920 he made the momentous decision. The world was ready for something different in the automobile line. A car with a bit of class and dash. An all-copper car. The car buying public would beat a path to his factory he decided. Production on the Mk I began almost immediately.
The car would be an eye-popping, crowd stopper of the first water (which is was). It would also start a trend and make his fortune (which it didn't) reasoned Lewis. He bought a 1921 Graham Brothers chassis and four-in-line engine and went to work. About 1000 man hours later the all copper brainchlid of Philip Lewis was ready to roll. With theatrical timing the car made its debut down Auckland's main street on Christmas Eve, 1921.
That it stopped the crowds in their tracks would be an understatement. Polished to an almost blinding sheen the Copper Car caused a near riot. Horses and children fled in terror as it chuffed down the crowded thoroughfare. Lewis drove it from one end of the country to the other then sat back and waited for the connoisseurs to flock to his door with orders for similar machines. No one did. Reported the "Auckland Star" newspaper of the time:
"When Mr Lewis designed the car he believed the idea of a vehicle with individuality would have appeal to the public. He has since found out that people prefer more stereotyped designs..."
Today the car belongs to Auckland businessman Frank Benson. He bought it from the estate of the late Philip Lewis on the understanding that it never leaves NZ. "I will never sell the old thing", says Frank Benson. "When I die it will go to the museum". Regularly, though not so often as he used to, Frank Benson fires up the old car and takes it for a spin. "but it's a hard job. Before you take it out, you have to spend about three days polishing it beforehand." he says. The two seater weighs nearly 13cwt. the hubcaps are copper, the toolbox is copper, the dashboard is copper as is just about everything else you care to name, from the ornate mother-of-pearl radiator cap to the gargoyle-like headlamps. Rumour is that offers in excess of $10,000 have been made for the device. Its present owner is determined never to sell it.
Novel devices on the already highly novel vehicle include a steam whistle, a combined starter-generator and a Fat Man Wheel. This latter slides up and out of the way to enable a plump driver to slide in more easily.
About 20 years ago the Copper Car hit the headlines in Auckland when it was the centre of a bitter war between Philip Lewis and the local traffic police. The police insisted Lewis fit sidelights to the car so it could be seen when parked at night. Lewis replied that the car didn't need lights because it "gleams like the flaming swords of the angels outside the Garden of Eden". No fool could miss it, he continued, and began writing poems about the traffic police whom he dubbed "Midnight White Sticker Snooper Fiends". He even published and distributed a booklet of poems outlining the foolishness of the parking police and urging people to unite and fight them.
The traffic police replied in kind claiming Lewis had "tried to inebriate the court with (where he was fined $1 for no side-lights) the exuberance of his verbosity". Lewis countered that the police were guilty of "terminological inexactitudes" as well as being a scourge of fools, idiots, and tormentors who were not only dishonest and blind but who were leading the motorists of Auckland "like lambs to the slaughter" with their "terror tactics".
His campaign had results. cars were later allowed to park unlit in the streets at night. As well as eliminating the risk of flat batteries in the morning for thousands of the country's motorists, Lewis claimed credit for two other firsts. His copper car was the first to have enclosed mudguards and mudguard-mounted lights.
Today, as it chugs round Auckland on its rare outings, the Copper Car is still a crowd-stopper - and mobile evidence of one man's dream that didn't quite come off...
So, definitely ugly and obviously a delusional design, in hindsight. I've no idea whether Frank Benson ever sold it but it now resides in the Southward Car Museum not too far from Wellington, so I really should take a visit when I'm next in that part of the country. Hemmings made mention of this car in an article almost 5 years ago (http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2007/02/14/copperhead/) where stated facts appear to counter those of the above article, so if anyone's a member of their blog, feel free to reply with a link to this article.
