Coachbult.com - Amesbury Metal Body Co



Amesbury Metal Body Co. - 1907-1921 - Amesbury, Massachusetts

One of several small body builders in this old New England carriage-building town.

Amesbury Metal Body Co of Amesbury, Mass built the body for George W. Hamblet’s one-off Hamblet automobile of 1909.

One of the first business organizations in the east to engage in the manufacture of aluminum auto bodies was formed in Amesbury in 1907. It was called the Amesbury Metal Body Co., and was composed of James H. Walker, John Foster, Fred England and J. Albert Davis, all of whom were once members of various body concerns of the town, but because of the invention of metal covered bodies, severed their relations and founded one of the most prosperous of all local metal shops. Their establishment was, like many others, located in Babcock’s No.5 plant on Chestnut Street where they employed some forty metal workers. Because of their building metal fenders and engine heads for various auto chassis they completed only eight finished motor car bodies per week. During their six year’s stay in Amesbury before going to Detroit in 1913, more than on-half of their work was for the Stevens-Duryea Motor Co. but they also built bodies for the Studebaker, Packard, and Alco automobiles. This firm was the second in the country to press-out metal engine hoods and door panels but very little of this work was done in Amesbury. Many of the pioneer auto body builders who had been building wooden bodies for some years before metal covered frames came in began to renovate their plants and hire the metal men to do this type of work. Some of the same concerns were liquidated, but most of them held on until the large presswork began to be employed, which was the key to maximum production. From 19l0 to 1920 several successful body building firms grew up in this community as the auto body business was proving to be very profitable and beneficial to the business men of the town already engaged in it.

For more information please read:

Orra L. Stone - History of Massachusetts Industries Vol I-IV - Boston, MA, S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. 1930

John Bartley - Amesbury as a Body-Building Center – April 13, 1943 – Collection of the Amesbury Public Library

Beverly Rae Kimes - The Classic Car

Beverly Rae Kimes - The Classic Era

Beverly Rae Kimes - Packard: A History of the Motorcar and Company

Beverly Rae Kimes & Henry Austin Clark Jr. - Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942

Richard Burns Carson - The Olympian Cars

Raymond A. Katzell - The Splendid Stutz

Marc Ralston - Pierce Arrow

Brooks T. Brierley - There Is No Mistaking a Pierce Arrow

Brooks T. Brierley - Auburn, Reo, Franklin and Pierce-Arrow Versus Cadillac, Chrysler, Lincoln and Packard