Coachbult.com - Kenneth L. Childs



Fabric Body Corp. - Kenneth L. Childs - 1923-1928 - Detroit, Michigan

Kenneth L. Childs, an ex-textile executive of Standard Textile, hoped to convince Detroit to adopt his own rigid-type fabric body for mass production. In 1923 Childs formed the Fabric Body Corporation in Detroit, intending to sell licenses for bodies paneled in Meritas cloth, a product comparable to Zapon and Rexine and manufactured by Standard Textile.

Childs had been experimenting with. fabric bodies since 1919, first with California-type tops for open touring cars, then closed bodies. In Childs' eyes, fabric was not a substitute for pressed steel, it was a replacement, superior. He backed the outer fabric of his bodies with an expanded metal mesh which gave "fullness" to the material.

His claims for the fabric body centered around silence, marginal weight reduction, what he considered to be ease of production-he developed a method by which body parts could be made as sub-assemblies by unskilled labor-and what he fancied was a luxury finish. Since body production in the U.S. was sometimes as far removed from final chassis assembly lines as another state, Childs' bodies did fit in with American production methods. This was an important contrast with a Weymann body, the covering of which was an on-car function. Nor did a manufacturer reed special framing for the Childs: "The Childs principle of mesh backing and fabric is satisfactory with standard body frames intended for metal panels." And he proved it with a demonstration.

Childs took to the road in 1923 with a fabric-bodied Packard built for him at Detroit's Model Body Corporation whose designer, George Mercer, was impressed. Mercer, a well-known contributor to several industry magazines of the day, said of him: "Childs isn't an automotive man but he's drawn on his background for a new body of outstanding originality."

The Packard was an eyeful. Every square inch of its body was covered with Meritas cloth - even the fenders, although humdrum pressed steel was suggested for these appendages on production cars. Childs took the car all over the country during the Twenties, exhibiting it at motor shows to prove the durability of its construction. Not everyone was impressed, of course. Thomas Litle, chief engineer for the Marmon Motor Car Company, thought it was "dull and drab" without mentioning the body by name.

Fabric bodies actually attracted a rather odd interest at the time. Childs got one of his only sizeable orders from an unlikely source. In 1924 the Mengel Body Company of Louisville took out a Childs license to build deluxe "leatherette" sedan bodies to fit the Model T. Several hundred bodies were to be offered as an "accessory item" through Ford dealers. Boxy but neat, the bodywork was well finished and justified Childs' claims for a textured "different" appearance. A new radiator in the RollsRoyce mode completed the "transformation." Mengel later pulled out of the coach building business to become a subcontractor for wood parts supplied to other body makers and to build truck bodies including some for the U.S. postal department.

Childs wanted, of course, to interest Detroit's manufacturers in adopting his body for production and Hudson, Moon, Marmon, Auburn, Apperson, Dodge and Chrysler did build a few for show cars and extra special dealer orders. But little else. Childs licensed the Haynes-Ionia Company, Sedan Body and the E. J. Thompson Company to produce these few orders and then turned his attention to the specialist and custom body field. Here, he was even less successful. Only a few Hudsons and a Merrimac-bodied Lincoln were made. Childs claimed a few licensees in Canada presumably Brooks Steam Motors Ltd. which built some two hundred fabric-bodied cars was chief among these-and six or seven in Europe.

Why so little success? Roy F. Anderson of Hayes-Ionia described the situation well: "While fabric construction does eliminate two difficult-to-control areas in body production, metal working and painting, experience [with fabric bodies] in lots of five hundred suggests there can be considerable trouble with this construction as well as any other." He specifically pointed out the stretching of the outer fabric which required skilled labor-no matter what Childs said-and noted that "hand labor has been the obstacle in the production of fabric bodies, perhaps due to orders which haven't been large enough to warrant special equipment and tools." By the late Twenties too, painting techniques had become so refined that the fabric body offered no savings in construction time over the standard metal production body. By 1928 Childs had disappeared from the body building scene.

Childs licensed his system to Apperson, Auburn, Chrysler, Dodge, Hudson, Marmon, and Moon. Typically the bodies were used only on show cars or a few limited-production custom bodies. Childs was the designer and did not have a factory like Weymann America.

For more information please read:

Roland Jerry - The Fabric Body and How It Flexed - Automobile Quarterly Vol.14 No.3

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

Brooks T. Brierley - Magic Motors 1930