Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Rumble seats, cont.

Here's the rumble seat photo I posted on the last Sepia Saturday.  I don't know much about it other than they are friends of my mother. The guy on the left looks a little like my Uncle Bob. (this would have been before he was my uncle because I wasn't born yet). The girl looks like my Aunt Phyllis. She was married to my Uncle Glenn. I don't know who the other guy is. The car pictured below shows what it would look like if it was shined up. I don't think it's the same kind of car, though.

So who invented the rumble seat? It was Sir Hubert Malcolm Rhumble, a prominent carriage designer of England’s late 1800s. He designed a coachman’s seat that stuck in the car lexicon, according to the Automobilist Magazine in August 1958. In early vintage automobiles the trunk lid folded back to form a seat area, sometimes called a “mother-in-law” seat. In that era, it must have been the stuff of some pretty good jokes.

 Silver screen stars James Cagney and Joan Blondell, fresh on the publicity trail with a flim-flam 1931 comedy, “Blonde Crazy,” joined Mae Madison in the a ’31 Model A Deluxe Roadster with a rag top and an add-on rumble seat sustaining the momentum of this odd conveyance. This was styling personified.

2 comments:

L. D. said...

I have never seen a rumble seat with any kind of roof before. It really is kind of a silly thing but people who wanted to go along, were willing to climb in and enjoy the breeze. Two pictures that are fun to see.

Helen Killeen Bauch McHargue said...

So interesting about the origin of the rumble seat. I love the idea of a "mother-in-law"seat too. It would even be better for that purpose if it had an ejection mechanism. Goodbye mother-in-law!''

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