Case Study

One 1922 Case, one family, several lifetimes of memories...and it still runs

Case Study

from Hemmings Classic Car

March, 2009 - Jim Donnelly

Fifty years. A half-century, if you're counting in larger increments. That's how long this 1922 Case seven-passenger touring car sat without budging in a storage building full of farm equipment, before the same family that bought it new roused it from an enforced slumber. It was in Dutchess County, New York, nearly within chip-chucking range of the Sleepy Hollow made famous by Washington Irving's manuscripts. How apt that is. Like Rip van Winkle, its eyes closed on rich farmland, and reopened to a transformed suburban bustle, a morass of minivans scurrying for the nearest Metro-North station.

Compelling tale for any car, really, but this one is a Case, one of perhaps 1,800 examples that were produced in 1922. Is that block lettering on its badge, in a font that could have come off a locomotive tender, looking familiar? That's because this is the same Case that became a landmark builder of agricultural equipment, long since merged with elements of International Harvester and Steyr of Austria.

Its founder, Jerome Increase Case, was born in upstate New York. Legend has it that he witnessed the first demonstration of Cyrus McCormick's newly invented mechanical reaper, circa 1831, and became enthralled with melding mechanics and agriculture. From that beginning, Case went on to build his first steam-powered thresher in 1869, having set up shop in Racine, Wisconsin, where he also became a force in politics.

A key date for the company's production automobiles--about 1,600, on average, were built each year--was 1918. That year, Case adopted Continental six-cylinder engines across the board. In the mid-1920s, the car was renamed as the Jay-Eye-See, after the founder's initials; the eagle-and-globe logo came from the Eighth Wisconsin Regiment that served heroically in the Civil War. In 1926, Case refocused on farm equipment; thus, the last 187 Case cars were built in 1927, mostly for export.

Driveable Dream car owner Jesse Sutherland couldn't tell us offhand what model Case this is, but an examination of its body and standard cowl lamps indicate that it's a Model W, on a 129-inch wheelbase and with 70hp. Jesse's family goes back for generations in and around Millbrook, New York. His grandfather, Anthony Briggs, bought the Case new. He was co-founder of a hardware and implement retailer, Reardon Briggs, that's still around today. Briggs bought it from another equipment dealer with a Case retail franchise that included a car dealership.

Jesse's mother, Elinor Sutherland, at age 90, still remembers the day it was first delivered, tagged at a divine $2,380. "My father took my mother and I on a demonstration ride with the salesman," Elinor wrote. "My mother and I started the ride in the back seat. Yippee! There were jump seats that came right up out of the floor. I tried one and then the other, and then sat on each side of the back seat. When the ride was over, my mother said, 'Thank goodness!' "

In the 86 years since, the Case has accumulated only 38,000 miles. Many of those were logged on trips to farms as Reardon Briggs's service vehicle. Elinor Briggs learned to drive in it. It carried floral arrangements during funerals. Eventually, it went into storage, emerging only in 1958 to run briefly at Reardon Briggs's 50th birthday bash.

We then leap in a single bound to early 2005, when Jesse first asked his mom if she'd like to ride in the Case once more. She was game, but nearly three more years were needed before the promised ride could take place.

The most immediately obvious problem was that raccoons had gnawed through the back-seat leather and devoured a lot of its stuffing. Next, the engine wouldn't turn, at least past a certain point. Jesse figured out the cause was broken-away teeth on the Continental's flywheel gear, because the crankshaft could only be rotated by hand past the trouble spot. Jesse took it to Stewart Anderson, a local machinist, who quickly determined that the teeth couldn't be rewelded. A replacement ring gear was located and installed. Next, Jesse's pal Kyle Mooney did some more welding, on the nose of the starter drive, to free it from binding.

Next up was getting the engine to actually fire. Despite having all of the Case's original documents, including owner's and service manuals, Jesse's not sure exactly which model Continental engine resides inside the Case. We do know, however, that Paige was using a like-seeming Continental four-main straight-six in 1922, designated as the 6-66, also rated at 70hp and with the same long 5.25-inch stroke, with a displacement right around 366 cubic inches. The Case has a Delco distributor, although Atwater-Kent electrics were also used on Continentals. After some checking, Jesse was able to identify the carburetor as a Rayfield Model G single-barrel downdraft.

To start the engine, Jesse had to first thoroughly, repeatedly clean off both the ignition points and spark plugs, then get the carburetor's pieces unstuck and also cleaned. The original fuel tank was deemed hopeless, "full of nasties" from lifetimes of unbroken freeze-and-thaw cycles plus debris. The cap was long gone; in its place, a dried-out rag stretched across the filler neck.

A solution was immediately at hand in the purest sense of that word: In one of the Reardon Briggs buildings, Jesse's brother found a discarded 1½-gallon fuel "tank" (it's more like a can) for an International Harvester MD diesel tractor lying around. Jesse hose-clamped it to the firewall and ran a clear poly fuel line down to the carburetor. Headache's gone.

Fuel capacity, you see, is scarcely an issue. You know how some people say, "Oh, it's completely original. It only has one repaint." That doesn't apply here. We'd say that this Case is original down to the air in its tires, only they stopped holding air long ago. "We did have to get a new set of Lester tires from Universal," Jesse conceded. "Had no choice. The original ones were so dried out that you could put your finger right through the sidewalls."

See those damp areas underneath the car? The water pump leaks, or maybe we should correctly say "flows," very freely. The original New York license plates from 1922 are still on the car, and expired. So far, wherever the resuscitated Case travels, it does so aboard an enclosed trailer. The gasoline load vaporized within a few moments of operation during our photo shoot, but so what? The worst you've got to do is push it up the trailer ramp (which we did).

That could change before too much more time slips by. The apogee of this story is that, yes, Elinor did get to ride aboard the Case under power once again, in the Memorial Day parade through Millbrook's charming little downtown, an honored guest because of her service as a decorated Army nurse in Germany during World War II.

The Case also rolled proudly into a Briggs-Sutherland family reunion in Dutchess County over the past summer. Beyond that, to most onlookers' astonishment, the completely preserved Case booted the local car-show season out of the gate by commanding the show field at Rhinebeck last spring.

Jesse--and his mom--want some more of all this. "She loves riding in the car," he beamed. "I'm going to try and fix all the leaks and see if we can go from here. In New York, this car can still be made legal. Mom's been down to the DMV several times, but every time she's there, they seem to find something else that's needed before it can be registered. We'll see what we can do. I took it to one show where we drove it down to the judges' platform after winning third in class. It drove them crazy."

This article originally appeared in the March, 2009 issue of Hemmings Classic Car.

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