Ford Quadricycle
1896 · Quadricycle with Tubular Frame · Work 257 of 1,871
A small four-wheeled motor carriage of 1896 in the open door of a brick shed behind a house in Detroit, four slender bicycle wheels, a light frame of thin steel tubes, a single plain leather bench seat for two on top of the frame, under the seat a small horizontal two-cylinder engine of bare iron with a flywheel at one side, in front of the seat an upright steering lever, a small brass bell on a bracket, the shed of dark red brick with a widened doorway of fresh pale wood, a man in shirtsleeves and waistcoat seen from behind at the doorway, warm evening light from the left.
- What it was used for
- Henry Ford was chief engineer of the Edison Illuminating Company in Detroit and built the car with friends in the shed behind his house. Ford Motor Company dates the first drive to 4 June 1896 and says he had to widen the doorway with an axe. In his 1922 memoir he says he ran it about 1,000 miles and then sold it to Charles Ainsley for $200: "I had built the car not to sell but only to experiment with." He used the money to build his second car. The museum puts the buy-back at $65 in 1904, Ford himself at $100.
- What was new
- Technically little was new: a two-cylinder engine of an estimated 4 hp on four bicycle wheels, about 500 pounds, two speeds of 10 and 20 miles per hour, no reverse. In his memoir Ford calls it the first and for a long time the only automobile in Detroit and dates it to 1892/93. Neither holds: The Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company give 1896, and according to the Detroit Historical Society Charles Brady King drove through Detroit on 6 March 1896 – three months earlier. King helped Ford build the Quadricycle.