Century-Old Automotive Literature Discovered

Filed in archive Catalogs on May 23, 2007

Collecting old automotive catalogs, books, and brochures must be a fascinating hobby, especially when something truly unusual comes along. It seems that our friends at McLellan's Automotive History have acquired just such a find, as explained in their Automotive Chronicles newsletter: "Once in a while we still uncover 100-year-old literature. Not long ago we received a call from a Texas museum that, in itself, was over 100 years old and they had a storage room of literature that had not been cataloged. They went through it and drew the conclusion that their time would be better spent doing something else." McLellan's was able to acquire the literature for a contribution to the museum and are now in the process of cataloging it for sale.

Judging by what I saw it's an understatement when they say "...among the brochures were some impressively old catalogs that you might find interesting." The 34-page catalog shown above is 8" x 5." Its heavy brown hardbound cover has gold embossed lettering and emblem... frontispiece is an art rendering of a beautiful young woman with bonnet sitting in American Mercedes 45 H. P. Touring Car. Eight tipped-in photo renderings and drawings show a side view of car and mechanical parts. Apparently this brochure is extremely rare. When Mercedes reprinted it in 1961 the only copy they could find was in the Philadelphia Free Library Collection. You can view more of this and other examples on the McLellan's site.