Semi-Private Quarters
1937 Packard, Custom coachbuilt by Rollston
Rollston Company
Harry Lonschein (1886-1977), an ambitious 16-year-old Romanian immigrant, found employment at Brewster & Co, one of the country’s oldest carriage makers in 1903. At that time Brewster was making the transition from one of the country’s oldest carriage makers to one of its first automobile body builders. In addition to building their own Knight sleeve-valve-engined car starting in 1915, Brewster was the NY agent for Delaunay-Belleville and later Rolls-Royce. During his employment there, Lonschein gained a lot of experience building high class enclosed bodies on the world’s finest chassis. At about the same time that Rolls-Royce opened their Springfield, Massachusetts assembly plant in 1921, Harry, along with a couple of partners, Sam Blotkin and Julius Veghso (1874-1964) formed the Rollston Company and moved into a building located on West 47th Street. They paid homage to their favorite chassis by naming the firm after it, and set out make the highest quality bodies possible. Veghso, a graduate of Andrew F. Johnson’s carriage drafting course, and a very experienced coachbuilder had founded the Perfect Body Co., an early coachbuilder who built bodies for Singer and other luxury chassis. Lonschein served as president, Blotkin, its secretary-treasurer, and Veghso the firm’s designer, draftsman and general superintendent of the factory.
Rollston’s bodies were acknowledged as the strongest of the classic-era and like the work of their favorite chassis, were over-engineered in the finest carriage-building tradition, using only the finest materials and castings. Their fine work attracted the attention of Grover C. Parvis, the Custom Body Manager of Packard's New York dealership.
Packard would become their best customer, and over the next 20 years, the vast majority of the 700 bodies built by the firm would appear on Packard chassis.
Coachbuilt.com
(sitting next to it is a 1910 Oakland, and too pretty to take out)
Semi-Private Quarters
1937 Packard, Custom coachbuilt by Rollston
Rollston Company
Harry Lonschein (1886-1977), an ambitious 16-year-old Romanian immigrant, found employment at Brewster & Co, one of the country’s oldest carriage makers in 1903. At that time Brewster was making the transition from one of the country’s oldest carriage makers to one of its first automobile body builders. In addition to building their own Knight sleeve-valve-engined car starting in 1915, Brewster was the NY agent for Delaunay-Belleville and later Rolls-Royce. During his employment there, Lonschein gained a lot of experience building high class enclosed bodies on the world’s finest chassis. At about the same time that Rolls-Royce opened their Springfield, Massachusetts assembly plant in 1921, Harry, along with a couple of partners, Sam Blotkin and Julius Veghso (1874-1964) formed the Rollston Company and moved into a building located on West 47th Street. They paid homage to their favorite chassis by naming the firm after it, and set out make the highest quality bodies possible. Veghso, a graduate of Andrew F. Johnson’s carriage drafting course, and a very experienced coachbuilder had founded the Perfect Body Co., an early coachbuilder who built bodies for Singer and other luxury chassis. Lonschein served as president, Blotkin, its secretary-treasurer, and Veghso the firm’s designer, draftsman and general superintendent of the factory.
Rollston’s bodies were acknowledged as the strongest of the classic-era and like the work of their favorite chassis, were over-engineered in the finest carriage-building tradition, using only the finest materials and castings. Their fine work attracted the attention of Grover C. Parvis, the Custom Body Manager of Packard's New York dealership.
Packard would become their best customer, and over the next 20 years, the vast majority of the 700 bodies built by the firm would appear on Packard chassis.
Coachbuilt.com
(sitting next to it is a 1910 Oakland, and too pretty to take out)