A Matter of Timing: 1937 Graham

Timing is everything, and Graham’s great automobiles are a proof—unfortunately. That’s because, despite the fact that their company made great cars, the Graham brothers got into the business at the worst possible time. As a result, most of us have never even seen a Graham. My experience with Grahams was restricted to old black and white photos until I recently spotted a 1937 Supercharger at a top restoration shop in Southern California, and then, incredibly, later I found a restored sedan from the same year at the De Rose winery in Hollister, California.

I knew from those old pictures that some Graham models were remarkably beautiful, such as the 1932 Blue Streak and the 1940 Hollywood that used the Cord body dies; but other than that, I knew very little about the marque. That is until I got a chance to drive the two aforementioned 1937 models. They were not the most beautiful examples of the marque, but did display quintessentially mid-’30s design thinking, and were handsome and worthy machines in their own right.