Marmon Little 8 Collapsible Coupe Roadster
‘It’s a fine car made small’ is how Marmon advertised its ‘Little’ 8 in the 1920s.
It was Marmon’s answer to the increasing demand for medium-price cars. The ‘Little Marmon’ may have been small in size, but it did have an eight-cylinder engine producing 64 hp. In 1927 the car cost just under 2,000 dollars, while the Model T Ford was priced at approximately 400 dollars.
An interesting fact is that the car on display was originally delivered to a Dutch client by the Amsterdam importer Dirk van der Mark. It is a ‘collapsible coupe-roadster’, a grand name for a two-seater cabriolet.
Howard Marmon set up business in 1902 and built technically advanced, high-quality motorcars from the outset, targeting the upper segment of the market. When in 1924 the new management decided to produce a smaller car, the ‘Little’ Marmon, Howard Marmon was against the idea, believing it fell short of his own high standards. It’s worth mentioning that a special Marmon, known as the ‘Wasp’, won the first 500 Miles of Indianapolis in 1911.