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THE GRAY GOOSE FROM MARYSVILLE

 by Keith Marvin

 

Is there anyone out there who wondered what the car was shown by its radiator and front end assembly on TAGS'n'STUFF's May cover?  Wonder no longer.  It is a 1925 Wills Sainte Claire.  Built from 1921 to early 1927 by C (for Childe) Harold Wills, one of the country's most brilliant metallurgists and automobile designers of his time.  A former Ford engineer, Wills was responsible for the introduction of vanadium steel into early Ford cars.  By the time his Wills Sainte Claire entered the automotive market, he's adopted molybdenum, the strongest steel known at the time, formerly used by Hispano-Suiza in its famed aircraft engines.  Available in both six and eight cylinder series and priced from $2,500 to $4,500, the cars carried disc wheels as standard equipment and a gray goose as their trademark.

If any car could be regarded as "too good", the Wills Sainte Claire was a viable contender for the title.  I recall seeing several of them back in the 1930's, almost always immaculately maintained and seldom if ever sold second-hand as their owners were prone to keep them for many years.  Despite their mechanical excellence and striking beauty, production was low and in their seven years of manufacture, only about 9,800 were completed.