1910 Peerless Model 29

The Peerless Company was started in Cincinnati in 1874 as a manufacturer of clothes wringers, clothespins, and washboards, later moving to Cleveland and becoming the Peerless Manufacturing Company. The Peerless Company had many talents including being the world leader in laundry equipment. In 1891, the company entered the bicycle manufacturing business. Success soon followed but by 1900, it was clear that the new opportunity lay in automobiles.

Louis P. Mooers was chosen by Peerless to spearhead this new endeavor. Licenses from DeDion Bouton were chosen, building both tricycles and 4-wheeled motorettes with single-cylinder DeDion engines. Soon, Mooers had moved beyond the lightweight DeDion machines, and designed a vertical inline two-cylinder with the engine in front of the driver and rear-wheel shaft drive.

By 1904 Mooers had built a 60hp four-cylinder Peerless for competition by the company's new driver, Eli 'Barney' Oldfield. The car was called the 'Peerless Green Dragon' and would help form the company's reputation for high performance and quality. The company would do well in the early Glidden Tours, setting perfect scores in 1906, 1907, and 1908. In 1907 Peerless introduced its famous slogan, 'All that the name implies'.

Mooers and Oldfield left Peerless in 1905 and went to work for the Moon Company. Packard design Charles Schmidt, who had designed the successful Packard Gray Wolf racer, was by Peerless to help with the creation of its six-cylinder engine. The new engine was patterned after the 30-horsepower four-cylinder unit designed by Mooers in 1905 and introduced for the 1908 model year. Both the four- and six-cylinder units used a T-head valve placement with the six using dual coil and magneto ignition, and both engines had a 5.5-inch stroke and 4 7/8-inch bore. The engines used cylinders cast in pairs that bolted to cast-aluminum crankcases and were backed by a three-speed manual transmission, using shaft drive to the rear axles and rear-wheel contracting band brakes. The front suspension was comprised of semi-elliptical leaf springs while the rear used a conventional platform rear setup with longitudinal semi-elliptical leaf springs at each side secured to the frame at their forward extremities and shackled to the ends of a transverse leaf spring at the rear.

Peerless models during the late 1900s and early 1910s catered to a wide audience of buyers, offering two four-cylinder engine options, a six-cylinder engine, three different wheelbase sizes, and ten catalog body designs.

Four and six-cylinder power, offered on several chassis sizes, were offered through 1915. For the 1916 model year, Peerless consolidated to a 125-inch wheelbase model powered by a new eight-cylinder engine with much of the coachwork designed for seven passengers.

The 1910 Peerless Model 29 was a four-cylinder, twenty-horsepower model resting on a 113-inch platform. Factory body styles included a limousine and landaulet with seating for six passengers. The limousine listed for $4,200 and the landaulet added an additional $100 to the price. The side valve, four-cylinder engine had a 4-inch bore and 4 5/8-inch stroke giving it 410 cubic-inch displacement.

by Daniel Vaughan | Jan 2021