The Lincoln Zephyr, with variations

   Edsel Ford was President of Ford Motor Company, but old Henry was still running the place.  Edsel could do what he wanted with the Lincoln division, and by the early 1930’s Edsel knew his company was in trouble.  Those were the years becoming known as the Great Depression. The market for those four thousand dollar Lincolns was shrinking. Over at the Briggs Manufacturing Company, the market for auto bodies and stampings was falling as manufacturers cut back production because of falling sales. Under contract to Briggs, Dutch engineer John Tjaarda  (later known as John Tjaarda van Sterkenburg) designed a stunning prototype auto that was eventually exhibited at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, complete with its rear engine.  Edsel Ford heard of it, perhaps saw it, and was interested, but not with the engine in the rear.  So Tjaarda revised it, moving the engine to the front.

  The Briggs-Tjaarda prototype was still far too radical to become a production Lincoln, and Tjaarda himself was reluctant to change it.  Edsel turned to his personal designer, E.T. “Bob” Gregorie. Years later, Gregorie would recall that he didn’t much care for the outlandish looks of the original Tjaarda creation, and he wasn’t totally impressed with his own revised version, either, which featured a yacht-like pointed prow. But Edsel was delighted with the result, telling Gregorie that it was much as he had envisioned the car when he handed Gregorie the assignment. On the strength of this design and others, Gregorie became the Ford Motor Company’s first formal styling chief.

   In early November 1935, the Ford-designed-and-built 1936 Lincoln Zephyr was on the showroom floors.  Powered by an improved V-12 engine, the new Zephyr filled the gap between the Ford and the traditional Lincoln. Priced at around $1300, compared to the hefty $4300 starting price of the senior Lincolns, the Zephyr hit its target, competing head-on with Buick, LaSalle, and the similarly styled Chrysler Airflow. Lincoln-Zephyr sold more than 13,000 units the first year, where the big coachbuilt Lincolns had typically sold in the hundreds—an unsustainable volume.

  Another company was struggling to survive the depressed economy, and it produced more cars than Ford and its competitors combined.  That company was the Tootsie Toy Corporation, whose little cars were mainstays of dime stores across the nation and far into the world.  Tootsie Toy leaders jumped early onto the plans of Edsel Ford, and they jumped into a model of a prototype made for Ford by the Briggs Manufacturing Company. But only after the Ford Briggs relationship had come to their abrupt end, leaving the firm (Tootsietoy) with expensive dies for a model of a car that never existed. Since the dies existed, Tootsie Toy put them to use, but it wasn’t the Zephyr that was coming into production.  It was a model without an identity.  It was then that Ted Dowst (President of Tootsie Toys) is said to have made his classic statement, “We make toys for doodling, not models for collecting.”  So the model was named Doodlebug, numbered 716, and produced through at least late 1936 and probably part of 1937.

      The Lincoln Zephyr was a sales success, and Tootsie Toy tried to join the parade in 1937 by revising the Doodlebug into a simplified Lincoln Zephyr.  The front and rear castings were eliminated and the model was made into a single casting with a sleek pointed hood, two grille panels, and a single large spotlight at the rear to replace the taillights in the fenders.  It was close enough for the dime store trade, and it sold pretty well.  When variations were made (a windup motor, a wrecker  boom) sales did not improve. 

    Other toy companies rushed their dime store Lincoln Zephyrs into production.  Hubley made theirs larger than the Tootsie Toy and also added airplane style fins, and sales rose.  But then came Pearl Harbor, and metal toys went out of production for the World War II years.  By the end of the war, Ford had dropped the Zephyr name, Tootsie Toy turned to more modern products, and the Lincoln Zephyr was left moldering on the back rows of used car lots.

   Until the world of 1/43 scales breathed new life into those Lincoln Zephyrs.

And there are other great Lincoln Zephyr models out there, including a brand new Brooklin coupe that looks great in the pictures I have seen.  

                                                                       Enjoy!    David H  

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For further information on these related topics, here are some good sources:

https://www.macsmotorcitygarage.com/ford-leaps-into-the-future-the-1936-lincoln-zephyr/

https://oldantiquetoys.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-tootsietoy-doodlebugs-and-zephyrs.html

https://theoldmotor.com/?tag=1936-lincoln-zephyr