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Mighty Marmon Muster

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By Skip Peterson, Wheels of the Week Updated 5:06 PM Friday, October 2, 2009

The 29th Mighty Marmon Muster, the annual national gathering of The Marmon Club, took place in Dayton, to coincide with the Dayton Concours d’Elegance at Carillon Park.

“I’ve been to a number of concours, and car shows presented by the Antique Automobile Club of America, but this concours is the best event I’ve been to,” explained George Bradley, the current president of the Marmon Club.

“And having the muster in conjunction, well, it just doesn’t get much better than that. There were 28 Marmons at Carillon Park on Sunday, and we’ve never had more than 20 cars ever attend a muster, so we think that it might have been the largest gathering of Marmon cars in one place since the factory closed in 1933,” Bradley, of Cuba, N.Y., added.

Members of the Marmon Club came from nine states for the five-day gathering, with another coming from Ontario, and one traveling from New Zealand.

“We had about 65 people all together,” explained co-chair Jerry Heil, who helped organize the event with his wife Marthann and Chic and Arlene Kleptz. The group also toured various spots in the Miami Valley on Monday through Wednesday, including the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, D& D Classics restoration facilities, the Bicycle Museum in New Bremen, the Garst Museum in Greenville and the Waco Museum in Troy.

“We’ve been touring all over the place,” said Peter Noyes as he trailered his 1926 Model D74. “We drive our car weekly, with a loose-knit group who meets every Sunday morning in our hometown of Falmouth, Maine. We go for a drive somewhere and get breakfast. We have the only Marmon in the group.”

Noyes’s Marmon was purchased by his father 26 years ago and has stayed in the family. “My father loved cars, and it rubbed off on me, and we were both fascinated with the engineering of Marmon. Using aluminum, and other unique designs, Marmon was years ahead of other car companies,” he added.

“We don’t show this car, we drive it, but we took it to the concours and got an award, which was really neat,” Noyes said. “The car was restored in 1967 and all we do is take care of it.”

Joe Byrne was winching his 1921 Model 34 Speedster back into the trailer. “Look at this,” he said, holding up a broken part. “Broke the water pump, so I’ll have to make a mold and cast a new one, then do all the machining on it,” he explained. “I’ve talked to everyone and no one has a spare, so I’ll build a few and have them on hand for other folks when theirs break,” he added.

Such is the life for those who own Marmons, restoring and preserving a marque that hasn’t been built since 1933.

For more information, go online to: www.marmonclub.com.

To nominate your special vehicle for Wheels of the Week, contact us at: Wheels, Marketing Publications Department, Dayton Daily News, 1611 S. Main St., Dayton OH 45409 or via e-mail at  arollins@coxohiomedia.com.

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