Cunningham Series V History

Introduced in 1916, the Series V-1 made Cunningham one of the first American manufacturers to put a V8 engine into a production car. The engine was a side-valve (L-head) V8 of 442 cubic inches, initially rated at 45 horsepower under the conservative NACC (National Automobile Chamber of Commerce) formula — a figure that understated its real output and rose substantially over the model's life, reaching roughly 90 horsepower by the early 1920s and around 106 horsepower in the late-1920s cars.

The Series V ran through a sequence of refinements — V-1 (1916–1917), V-2 (1918–1919), V-3 (1920–1921), V-4 (1922 onward), V-6 (mid-1920s), and V-7 (1928 onward) — each improving the same fundamental big side-valve V8 chassis rather than reinventing it. Hand-built and bodied in Cunningham's own shops, these were among the most expensive cars in the United States, and the marque's reputation for craftsmanship earned it the nickname 'the American Rolls-Royce.' A Cunningham driven by Ralph DePalma set a record run of about 98 mph at Sheepshead Bay in 1919, underlining that the cars had performance to match their price.

In the 1920s the Series V became a status symbol of Hollywood and high society — owners included Mary Pickford, Harold Lloyd, Fatty Arbuckle, Hoot Gibson, Cecil B. DeMille, William Randolph Hearst (who kept one at San Simeon), and members of the Field and Wrigley families. Passenger-car production wound down around 1931 as the Depression destroyed the market for hand-built ultra-luxury cars; the firm then built custom bodywork for other chassis before leaving the automobile business entirely in 1936.