A VISIT TO HERMAN GRABER, CAROSSIER by Charles de Limur
About four years ago while travelling through Switzerland with my son Charlie we stopped at Wichtrach the workshop, garage and home of Herman Graber, Carossier. At the time I was driving an Alvis 3 liter T.D. with coachwork built in 1960 by Park Ward. The main purpose of my visit was to compare the differences of my car with one bodied by Graber. They are so considerable that it was then I decided to order a new car. That was in the Fall of 1963, but it was only three weeks ago that I took delivery of car number 27474, the latest model 3 liter Alvis T.F. appropriately licensed with Swiss number plates BE 104253.
Wichtrach is a tiny town, a little South of the Swiss capital, half way on the main road between Bern and Thun. If you adhere to the speed signs on the road you will not only miss Graber, but you might find yourself in Nieder Wichtrach or Ober Wichtrach be-fore you have time to apply the brakes. I arrived in Bern three days too early because the car was not finished which only goes to prove that even after four years you can’t rush a master body maker.
Graber and his workmen still do everything by hand, and when one of his men is ill, as was the leather craftsman, then you just have to wait. Hanging around the workshop trying to speed the final touches to my car gave me ample opportunity to examine some of Graber’s old records which, while very incomplete, date back to 1926. If one is to judge by the very large painted number that, on a previous visit to the workshops appeared on the radiator of my car, Graber has built 751 bodies.
However, this total does not reflect the work put out by the shop, since he does a considerable amount of reconversions. For instance, at the present, he is an agent for Rover and while selling factory built cars he does occasionally re-model a few 2000 Rover TCs by changing them from four door sedans to two door coupes or drop-heads. In doing this he lowers the chassis, installs Konis and puts in his own specially built seats. These remodeled Rovers are not included in the above mentioned 751 bodies, since in the remodeling a large part of the body shipped from the factory is used whereas in the Graber body everything is hand worked from the start.
Of course the best known period of Graber’s work is that done before the last World War, and it was the records of this period in which I was particularly interested. During the years 1926 to 1940 I noted he built bodies on the following chassis: Bentley, Bugatti, BMW, Delage, Delahye, Duesenberg, Lagonda, Lancia, Maybach including one 12 cylinder Zeppelin, Mercedes, Packard, Rolls Royce, Voisin and surprisingly enough about 20 Dodges. It would have taken much too long to transcribe all the records so I limited my investigation to Bugattis.
[An extract from the American Bugatti Club Pur Sang Summer 1967 edition.]
The commission number of the car is 791 not 751. It was delivered in July 1967. 793 was completed in December 1967 and 794 in August 1968, the last Alvis made by Graber on chassis 27475.
Alvis Archive 