Coachbult.com - Bela Body Company



Bela Body Company - 1916-1919 Amesbury, Massachusetts - 1919-1923 - Framingham, Massachusetts

Charles Franklin Pettingell established a machine shop in 1873 that specialized in building precision milling and wheel-wright machinery for the carriage industry. An early product of the firm was the C.F. Pettingell Rim and Felloe Rounding Machine which was used to manufacture carriage wheels.

Pettingill’s shop was destroyed by the 1888 Amesbury Fire, but he rebuilt and continued to introduce new machinery. By the late 1890s C.F. Pettingell manufactured over 30 different machines, all earmarked for the carriage building industry. Products included tenoners, tilting arbor bevel saws (table saws) and irregular template dressers for wooden working plus friction cutters and rolling formers for sheet metal fabrication and their ever-popular rim and felloe rounding machines.

In 1905, C.F. Pettingell retired and A.G. Bela purchased the firm reorganizing it as the Pettingell Machine Co. The firm’s most popular product was the Pettingell Automatic Hammer, which was available in two sizes, the #1 and the #2. Body panels that required several days of hand hammering could be finished in less than an hour using the labor saving device which was designed specifically for the automotive body business. The firm’s largest customer was the Fisher Body Corp. who used over 500 Pettingell power hammers in their factories. During the teens, twenties and thirties their specialized equipment could be found in every firm in the country that dealt with either manufacturing or repairing composite automobile bodies.

Very few Pettingill Automatic Hammers survive, and restored examples sell for $20,000.

Pettingell’s son, Charles I. Pettingell worked for the Walker-Wells Body Co., one of Amesbury’s large production body builders and A.G. Bela later dabbled in the body business forming the Bela Body Company in 1916 to build production bodies for Franklin, Hudson, Winton and Temple-Wescott. In 1919 Bela Body was purchased by Richard H. Long, a prominent Framingham, Mass. shoe manufacturer. Long moved the entire operation into his own buildings and concentrated on closed bodies for Franklin. When he decided to manufacture his own automobile, the Bay State, in 1923, Long withdrew from manufacturing bodies for other. The Bay State was not a success, and R.H. Long decided to concentrate on retail automobile sales. His family is still in the business and operates a large Cadillac, Pontiac and GMC agency in Framingham.

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Richard H. Long was a prominent shoe manufacturer in Framingham, Massachusetts in the early part of this century. His company owned two large concrete buildings four or five stories high. During the first world war he obtained government contracts supplying the army with harness and other leather products.

After the war Mr. Long bought the Bela Body Company of Framingham which had been making Franklin body sections, but which was handicapped by insufficient space and facilities. In 1919 he moved this operation into his own buildings where he began manufacturing entire sedan bodies for Franklin.

In 1923 he discontinued Franklin work as he was now building the Bay State car and needed his facilities for that purpose. The R. H. Long Company is still in business in Framingham, now the Cadillac. Pontiac and GMC agency.

In 1916, Bela Body Co. were building Wintons and the Biddle & Smart Co. painted and trimmed them.

Bela Body Company – Framingham, Massachusetts – built the bodies for the 1921-1922 Temple-Wescott automobile which was also built in Framingham.

Bela built production bodies for Franklin, Hudson, Winton and Temple-Wescott.

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Bela Body Co. moved from Amesbury to Framingham

1902 - Richard H. Long comes to town and sets up a shoe factory which later becomes an automobile factory, and finally an automobile dealership.

1928 - Selected as a Massachusetts Delegate to the Democratic National Convention

For more information please read:

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