Hoffman motors plate frame.

[Mpower5266]

I recently had a couple of these made for my 02 and my E9, and a few people have told me that they might be interested in one.  I just wanted to put out a feeler to see if it would be worth doing a bulk order and basically selling them at a little over cost to make it worth my time to ship them out.  Would any of you be interested? 

 

Untitled by Nick  Wood, on Flickr

[John_in_VA]

Saw this in your FB post - nice touch!  I did the same as I couldn't find a frame from the original dealer where my tii was delivered.

[mtriple]

Cost estimate? sure it will depend on count, but do you have a ballpark?

 

Thanks,

Hamada

[Lucian]

I will  take one, or 2 ... too kool  ...Max H rules, I may have done  2 replies so 2 max not 4 ... tks ...  Lucian

[Lucian]

https://hyperallergic.com/69023/the-shocking-demolition-of-frank-lloyd-wrights-park-avenue-showroom/

[tomphot]

The problem I have with so many of these frames is that they’re designed for the stickers going up top as is common up north.  As yours shows, in GA, lower right should be visible. 
Very cool frame!

[Stevenola]

In!

[MikeD]

I will take 1.

[bmw_e30]

is this an exact replica of the original ones?

[HBChris]

5 minutes ago, bmw_e30 said:

is this an exact replica of the original ones?

There are no originals.  This is a well done tribute frame.

[Lucian]

Hi Mpower5266, I belong to a Mercedes club and M Hoffman brought in the Mercedes and many others from that period, I will put your  link on my club site and 3+ others, 1 being the 300 SL's    Max brought those in (Jay Leno has a 300 SL  gull wing-he should have one also)  then there are all the other brands he was selling Porsche, Aston, I hope you have 100 plates to make, a Park Ave address is rare … from my experience it will start off slow and grow … I am going to have T shirt made up with the  MH show room color sketch photo on front ( I guess now it is public domain so I hope no copyright problem)  will show on reply this afternoon … Photo is my rear lic plate holder on my Mercedes and 1 I get from you will go on front and other one will go on my BMW 1600-2 1967 Max H had Giovanni Michelotti  design the early 1600 and 2002 plus 700 will make you dizzy with with  all cars  that he designed  L

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Michelotti

[Lucian]

Here is tee ordered with discount they are having sale -47%  it totaled $28.00 delivered,   the back is Frank L Wright next to Hoffman house he designed,  Max Hoffman traded him 2 Mercedes, 1 being the famed 300 SL Gullwing for design and plans, after they demo showroom only 2 FLW designs left in NY,   Note: the other car should have been a 1600    .. L  

[Conserv]

Just to be clear, I’m in Chris’s camp on this issue: this is a well-intentioned tribute frame.

 

I don’t believe there was a Hoffman Motors Corp, 375 Park Avenue, license plate frame. If I’m wrong, terrific. Let’s see one!

 

But, as a New Yorker, and as someone trained in architectural history, I want to point out that 375 Park Avenue — I worked at 277 Park during my early years with Ernst & Young — is the Seagrams Building, on the east side of Park Avenue between East 52nd and East 53rd Streets. It is truly one of the most beautiful tall office buildings ever constructed: all glass and bronze, and designed by Mies Van der Rohe, one of my favorite architects. Even the sidewalk manhole covers are bronze and designed by Mies. It is, and always has been, premium office space (with, guess who, Seagrams, as its primary tenant for decades). Hoffman Motors rented a small space in this prestigious building. That was their “headquarters.” There was no auto showroom here. The fabulous Four Seasons restaurant occupied the first floor. When we took clients there in the 1990’s, it remained pure Mad Men, a piece of 1958.

 

Max Hoffman’s auto showroom — the one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright — was in a much less spectacular building, across Park Avenue, at the southwest corner of Park and East 56th Street. Although this remained a (Mercedes?) showroom in the 1990’s, it was just a showroom — I believe there were a couple of salespersons on duty — and you generally needed to go to 40th Street and Eleventh Avenue to actually pick up or service your Benz. I don’t know if the Park Avenue showroom ever included a service area — perhaps it did, but it’s unclear where that might have been.

 

My point is simply that you shouldn’t show up at 375 Park Avenue expecting to see a showroom, or a place where BMW’s were sold and serviced. Hoffman Motors simply had a small administrative office in that large prestigious building. Indeed, sales and service occurred in NYC with considerable frequency, but those mundane duties tended to occur across town, on the then-cheaper, and “un-glamorous” West Side.

 

And regarding that phrase from virtually every (pre-BMW NA) Archives report: “delivered on BLANK date to Hoffman Motors Corp. in New York City”, every Hoffman-imported car had such a delivery. It was not a physical delivery of the car — heck, it generally occurred before the car was loaded on the ship from Germany — but a legal delivery of the car from BMW AG to Hoffman Motors Corp, as sole U.S. importer.

 

That phrase says absolutely nothing about the legal Port of Entry, the U.S. port where the car passed U.S. Customs and entered the country. And that phrase says absolutely nothing about the selling dealership. To clarify a common mis-conception, 100% of the U.S.-imported ‘02’s did not arrive in NYC, from which they were trucked to dealerships. They arrived at U.S. ports on both coasts, based on the proximity of those ports to their respective dealerships.

 

OK, now back to your regularly-scheduled programming... ?

 

Regards,

 

Steve

 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2020 by Conserv

[Lucian]

Very, Very kool,  great address you/Steve worked on Park Ave, link says showroom at  430 Park Ave at 56 Street and pic when Mercedes was there and a corner exterior view… well one more Tee "they are on sale" .. I like the trib... Plate, I will search low and high to find a original …  my holder on my car is a original ..and I am talking with company about a holder frame original for antique motorcycle and now more fun …never knew I like history so much?    tell more great stuff  NY, NY    L

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/23/automobiles/wrights-new-york-showroom-now-just-a-memory.html

 

https://web.archive.org/web/20121018184007/http://www.bmwism.com/bmws_designers.htm

 

[Booger32]

Put me down for one!

Thanks, Steve