2815 Recent purcahse of a mark ii have a few questions

[Pat Marshall]

Since yours was an early car it was not built by Mitchell. I can't recall the name of the first company that delivered "bodies in white", but I recall reading in the Continental files about slow deliveries and very poor workmanship and an enormous amount of lead. The bodies were fitted at the body maker on a jig. It could be that they were assembled and guide holes drilled before the front of the car was removed from the jig for shipment. Since they didn't have a frame to support the front fenders the entire front end was removed from the body.

Barry, I was surprised to learn that there were two Mark II body manufacturers. So, I called Lowell Domholdt to ask him about it and he said that he had never heard about a second body manufacturer and had never heard the term "bodies in white".

We're both very interested in learning more about that. Since the first Mark II made with a production body was Prototype 9502F (the Elmer Rohn car) and it used a Mitchell body, there must be quite a story there.

Considerations that Lowell raised:
(1) Why would they start with Mitchell for maybe as little as one unit and switch to a second vendor?

(2) Of course, what was the name of that vendor, and how many units did they make?

(3) Since automotive body stamping dies are horrendously expensive were there two sets of dies with each body maker being required to have a set for their production, or was there just one set that Continental owned and switched between body manufacturers?

I'm thinking this may require a trip to the Ford Archives for more research, so I'm wondering how one would get access to those records?

This is really interesting!

Barry, regarding shipping photos, I've found one - so far.