Duryea Motor Wagon

1893 · Petrol Buggy with Friction Drive · Work 255 of 1,871

Duryea Motor Wagon, 1893, Petrol Buggy with Friction Drive

The Duryea Motor Wagon in a Springfield carriage shop in Massachusetts, a converted horse buggy body on high wooden wheels, single-cylinder engine under the seat, friction transmission, tiller steering.

What it was used for
The car was an experimental vehicle without a customer. Frank Duryea finished it in Springfield, Massachusetts; his brother Charles had begun it on a used ladies' phaeton that, according to Smithsonian curator Don Berkebile, Charles bought for $70 in 1892. Backer Erwin Markham put nearly $3,000 into it. The Smithsonian gives 21 September 1893 as the day of the road test; According to Berkebile's study the car was pulled by a horse to a barn after dark that day and given its first tests there; the next day Frank wrote that the belt transmission was very bad, the engine all right. The first longer run, about six miles, followed on 18 January 1894. Afterwards the car stood in barns until 1920.
What was new
Technically it was a 4 hp petrol engine – by Frank's own rating – in an existing horse carriage. The Smithsonian cautiously calls it one of the earliest American cars; John W. Lambert was driving in Ohio City in 1891. What was demonstrably new came afterwards: in 1896 the Duryea Motor Wagon Company built 13 identical cars, according to Berkebile the first example of mass production in American automotive history. The brothers themselves disputed the credit: Charles claimed it until his death in 1938, Frank from 1942.

Connections

Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.

  1. Follows fromBenz Patent-Motorwagen1886Frank Duryea later stated that they had leaned heavily on the Benz patents. According to Don H. Berkebile (Smithsonian), Charles Duryea took the vertical crankshaft with its horizontally rotating flywheel from Benz's US patent 385087 of 26 June 1888; nothing more, he cautions, seems to have gone into the first plan.Source: Don H. Berkebile: The 1893 Duryea Automobile in the Museum of History and Technology (Smithsonian Bulletin 240, Paper 34, 1964), Volltext

Further reading