Compressed Art: 1937 Graham 116 Supercharged
What can be better than a car with Art Deco styling and a supercharged engine? This Graham 116 is an interesting project and is relatively complete from the mechanical and sheet metal aspect. Stored for quite a while, the seller is needs to sell this great and not so common classic. Certainly restoration worthy, this Graham is currently bid up to $3,050.00. Check it out here on eBay out of Salem, South Carolina.
The flat head inline 6 appears very complete and still features the icing on the cake, the gear driven centrifugal supercharger. While the car has not been started by the current owner, he does report that the engine has been turned over, and that the supercharger turned over as well. My guess is that this Graham is a “I’ll get to it someday” project but someday has yet to come. That isn’t a bad thing as this Graham has a lot of potential. The interior was not well documented for the listing, but there is a shot of interior roof section, and my guess is that the interior is bare bones. It would be great if the seller elaborated on the interior via the description or a photo.
This Graham is a two door coupe and its supercharged, so it seems rather hard to resist. The body isn’t too shabby, but the passenger rear corner looks to have been bumped as there looks to be some minor wrinkles down low. The nose is painted a powder blue, and really the color looks nice on the car if only this sleek project had been finished. Despite the lack of interior photos, the seller claims this Graham to be complete minus a few trim pieces like the hood vents. I am sure there are probably a few other things missing, but as a whole this is a solid start to a rare restoration. Would you revive this Supercharged Graham?
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Comments
I was at the Hershey PA swap meet a few years ago and a guy had a Graham supercharger, still in its original packing crate. It’s a neat piece of equipment. Although not a sharknose, I still hope this one gets restored. Toughest part might be finding someone who is able to restore that supercharger.
I passed on an running one ten years back for 15k all original but it had a straight eight
with turbo in running shape.
The turbo had pieces machined to make operational 😉
I had two many cars at time (vette and Stang)
Let me restate on engine being a six turbo
For 1934, Graham introduced a crankshaft-driven supercharger, designed in-house by Graham Assistant Chief Engineer Floyd F. Kishline.[2] At first offered only in the top eight-cylinder models, when the eights were dropped for 1936, the supercharger was adapted to the six. Through the years, Graham would produce more supercharged cars than any other automobile manufacturer until Buick surpassed them in the 1990s.
Very cool and interesting project! Amazing that the supercharger is all there by the looks of it. Or Drop in a v8.I’d leave the rest and keep looking stock otherwise. Might be a affordable project.Hope it goes to someone looking for something reasonable!
This is cool, and the price is currently reasonable for what you get. That supercharger must have been innovative for the time.
That blue paint may be epoxy primer.
Lots of work here, but you don’t see many of these. I hope someone brings it back to its original condition.
– John
These are indeed interesting cars. This is a 1936 we have at the museum, https://www.calautomuseum.org. It gets lots of attention. The supercharger really does look more like a washing machine part.
Cool car. Hope it gets put back on the road.
My high school shop teacher has a fully restored Graham paige supercharged in his barn. It took a lot of years to bring it back from the fence row where he found it in 1987,but sure is a beautiful car now.
My ’55 Chev convert crashed into 2 of these. Both supercharged. One 2 door and one 4 door. I was at one of my high school teacher’s homes ( Bob Bethell I wish I could find him) working on my car. He was on the right side and dropped a wrench. It fell right onto the starter in just the right (wrong) spot and it engaged the starter. The car was in gear and proceeded to run into one Grahm and dove it into the next one that “WAS” on jack stands knocking the car completely off and hitting the floor. I am sure glad that I was not the one that dropped the wrench!
Cool cars. Naturally they were innovative. They were from the Cord family of cars.
Not really from the “Cord Family” but the later Graham Skylark used the Cord body dies (Along with the Hupp Skylark) from the firewall on back but other than that, no corporate relation to Auburn Cord Duesenberg.
Wayne:
They were not part of the Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg organization. The only common link was that Graham Paige and Huppmobile went together and acquired the dies and rights to the Cord sedan [Beverly & Westchester series Cords], the result was the Hollywood Graham and the Hupp Skylark. Problem was, the Cord bodies were VERY labor intensive, and they lost money on each one they built.
You can read about the details here: http://www.grahamownersclub.com/history.html
Skip down to begin reading around 1939 or 1940.
The blowers on these cars are pretty basic units, and assuming that the water jacket’s not rotted away, they can be rebuilt pretty easily.
I’m with the others, this one would be worthy of restoration.
Useless historical fact: Joseph Fraser of Graham-Paige went onto form Kaiser-Fraser Corp. with Henry J, Kaiser after WWII. That’s another story worth reading.
Way back late 60’s tried to Buy Paige, upper model, that had been driven until gears. In rear nrooke out.
Owner had a store back end of coastal river in Wa.. And at time I offered him $400.00 he said no his grandson wanted it.
Auto had 5+00 miles and was off ground for about 10 years but only took hour to start.
Why I wanted it: there were vases for flowers on post behind doors.
Oh ya. When old coot died his favorite relative sold auto to junk man for a fifth and 5 bucks.
Rolling art piece.
Worth every penny, and deserves to be restored back to its original glory.
have a 1957 Nissan Patrol with a stock Graham Paige designed inline 6 in it that was manufactured in Japan in 1957! Get your heads around that! Lol
The 1957 Nissan Patrol 6 has a 1936 Graham designed engine that Nissan had converted in the late 1940s to become an overhead valve version. It was used by Nissan Patrols until the early 1960s. This Graham designed engine was also used by a very well known taxi company in New York until the mid 1960s as well.
Nissan used the 6 cylinder 217.8 cubic inch Graham Paige designed engine, converted by Nissan to OHV, from 1949 until the early 1960s. The L head 217.8 motor was used by Graham Paige from 1936 until the last Graham was built on August 21 1940 – a 1941 model Hollywood. Interestingly the famous Yellow cabs of New York also used the same Graham designed L head engine from 1950 until the early 1960s I believe.