1919 Paige 6-66

William Jewett of Detroit had made a sizeable fortune in the coal industry before entering the automobile industry. Along with his business partners, $100,000 was invested in the new Paige-Detroit Motor Car Company (sight unseen). The newly formed company was under the direction of Fred Paige, former president of Reliance Motors which had recently been absorbed by General Motors. Upon seeing the new car in 1910, Mr. Jewett fired Fred Paige and supposedly declared, 'It's rotten. A piece of junk!' Going a step further, the entire engineering staff was fired and the assembly line was shut down in 1911. Positioning himself as president, Mr. Jewett re-opened the Paige Motor Car Company.

Production increased steadily and by 1914 a total of 4,631 cars were built, nearly tripling by 1916. That was the same year that the company began offering a line of automobiles solely powered by six-cylinder engines. Body styles included elegant tourers, sporty coupes, and convertibles. They proudly promoted their automobiles as 'The Most Beautiful Car in America.'

Production reached 16,090 cars annually by 1920. Wanting to demonstrate their superior engineering and sporting prowess, the company decided to build the 'Paige Speedster.' A prototype was built and would serve as a test bed and demonstration model for the soon-to-be-released 'Paige Daytona.' Before it earned the name 'Daytona', a racing version of the Paige 6-66 series was driven by Ralph Mulford to a world speed record of 102.83 mph for its class. The fifty production cars that followed were known as the 'Daytona Speedster' and were advertised as the 'World's Fastest Car.'

The Paige Racing Special
The racing special wore a special German-silver body on a stock Paige chassis and was powered by a stock Continental 6-66 engine. Ormond drove it on Florida's Ormond Beach to a Class B stock chassis record and was the first stock chassis vehicle to break the 100 mph barrier at Daytona Beach. In May of 1921, the car was brought to the 1/8-mile banked track at Uniontown, PA where Mulford proceeded to set the Class B records for all distances from five to 100 miles. It later set a new Brisbane-to-Adelaide record in Australia in 1925.

The Paige Speedster Prototype
The prototype that preceded the production 6-66 Daytona Speedsters received a long wheelbase chassis with Westinghouse air springs and disc wheels. It had a boat-tail-shaped speedster body that was similar to the style of the Stutz Bearcat and Mercer Raceabout. It had a mother-in-law seat and a special dashboard layout. Beneath the bonnet was a 331.4 cubic-inch side valve Continental six-cylinder engine that produced approximately 100 horsepower. It had a three-speed manual transmission, two-wheel drum brakes, a solid front axle with leaf springs, and a live rear axle with leaf springs.

The Paige Speedster Daytona had the distinction of being one of the few American sports cars of the early 1920s that could achieve a manufacturer-promised top speed in excess of 80 mph.

Of the approximately 50 examples built, it is believed that 18 examples of the Daytona Speedsters have survived.

The company's best year was 1923 when sales peaked at 43,500 units. During its career, approximately 400,000 Paige vehicles were built.

In 1927, Jewett sold Paige to the Graham brothers, and the merged companies reconstituted as the Graham-Paige Motors Corporation.

by Daniel Vaughan | Jan 2023