Photo: F. Scott Fitzgerald with wife Zelda and daughter Scottie, 1923, in the sports coupé the author purchased a few years earlier after selling his first novel, THIS SIDE OF PARADISE.
“When I was a boy, I dreamed that I sat always at the wheel of a magnificent Stutz, a Stutz as low as a snake and as red as an Indiana barn.”
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
According to an insightful 1993 article entitled “The Automobile as a Central Symbol in F. Scott Fitzgerald” by Luis Girón Echevarría:
“The cars in Fitzgerald’s life provide a rough gauge by which to measure the discrepancy between the dream and reality of his life, as well as his waning fortunes, and his journey from careless, irresponsible youth to cautious, worried middle-age…
His first car, purchased in 1920 after the publication of his best-selling first novel, This Side of Paradise, was a three-year-oíd sports coupé; during the next two decades he would own a used Rolls-Royce, an oíd Buick, [a] Stutz, a nine-year-old Packard, an oíd 1934 Ford coupé, and, finally, a second-hand 1937 Ford convertible…
It was Fitzgerald’s destiny to begin life dreaming of a magnificent red Stutz Bearcat and to end up driving a second-hand Ford. But during the interval he wrote of America’s dreams and of America’s enduring love affair with the automobile.”
Read more of this fascinating article here.
Silver Birch Press 
The car in the photo is not the second-hand sports coupe that Fitzgerald bought with the proceeds of his first novel. That car was a Marmon (a luxury make), and was immortalized in his and Zelda’s joint piece, “The Cruise of the Rolling Junk.” The car pictured here is the Renault that served as the Fitzgerald family car during their stay in France in the mid-20s. Reportedly, the Renault started life as a sedan but became a convertible when, following a minor accident, the Fitzgeralds chose to have the damaged top shorn off rather than repaired.
Thanks for the correction.
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