Hat Boxes?

 

Frances Paget mentioned that lady designers were adding hat boxes to fashionable cars at the Paris Automobile Exhibition of 1928, but was that a thing?

Indeed inventors were still coming up with new designs for hat boxes in the Model A era, but separate from auto accessories—just the box. Traveling bags were still new inventions. The first “case for suits” or suitcase I could find was in 1890. (The story also included a walking stick case, a boot case, and two shirt cases.) In 1912 I found the earliest example of a hat box meant for a car.  It, along with everything else meant for travel, was planned to be attached outside of the passenger’s compartment. See the photo.

In a description of a rally in 1916, there was a long list of all of the packages dropped by the many cars along the way because the roads were in such poor condition. Lost tools and spare parts were packed in several hat boxes because drivers realized that they were ideal for holding many things besides hats.

Amazingly, there aren’t many advances over the next decade. I see an advertisement in 1920 that perhaps is a metallic hat box that, once it is attached to your running board, can be painted your car’s color, or you can leave it black.

In 1924, Studebaker Big Six models, had hat boxes standard in the back on the trunk rack  (also such conveniences as a rear view mirror, a flower vase, and an automatic gasoline signal.)

In 1925 I find the first hint of what we know as a “glove compartment”, but I want to know how the illustration matches the dimensions described in the text. How are all of these muffin pans going to  fit into a 4” by 6 “ opening? In the same article, they advise obtaining a light wire basket and sewing it through the car’s headliner with the thread holding firmly onto the chicken wire as a place to store hats that won’t be sat upon.

In 1928, hat boxes and glove compartments inside of automobiles would have been a minor sensation, although, not enough to make immediate changes in U.S. automotive design.

The earliest example of a dash compartment built into an American car is in the REO Royal 8 for 1931—not for any of their other models. In 1933 Plymouth added a dash compartment for several of their models.  In 1934, Ford & Chevy added dosh boxes as well.

Wikipedia credits Packard with the first glove box way back in 1900, and Dorothy Levitt, pioneering British auto racer, with inventing the term in 1909.  These are both true, and not true at the same time, as the 1900 Packard had the engine behind the driver, and nothing in front, picture an VW beetle—would you call that a glove compartment or a trunk? Why didn’t they put a door inside the passenger compartment or continue it after their cars moved the engines to the front?

And Dorothy Levitt did suggest having a box inside your car to hold your driving gloves in her 1909 book The Woman and the Car. That way oil and grease wouldn’t stain the upholstery and get on your clothes. Not to dispute the soundness of that advice for the time, but her advice was for a box, in the car, she didn’t advise cutting a hole in the dash, and installing a box there like The American Blacksmith, etc. in 1925.

I would also say that door pockets and cubbies under seats, used to store gloves, that predate 1931, also don’t count as glove compartments.