La Marquise

1884 · Steam Quadricycle · Work 268 of 1,871

La Marquise, 1884, Steam Quadricycle

The De Dion-Bouton et Trepardoux steam quadricycle La Marquise on a Paris avenue, coke fired boiler mounted behind the passengers, two steam engines at the rear wheels, forward facing bench.

What it was used for
Built by De Dion, Bouton et Trépardoux, a firm that had started in 1883 making boilers, for Jules-Albert de Dion and named after his mother. RM Sotheby's gives the operating data: driven by one person, a coal bunker with hoppers eliminating the need for stoking, in steam within 45 minutes, capable of 38 mph, 170 psi boiler pressure and 40 gallons of water for some 20 miles. De Dion kept it until 1906, after which it stayed 81 years with the family of the officer Henri Doriol and came to auction in 1987, incomplete and not running. In 2007 it made 3.5 million dollars at Gooding & Company in Pebble Beach, and in 2011 at RM Auctions in Hershey 4.2 million hammer, 4.62 million with premium. The price honours a technology the firm itself discarded within ten years: the steam engineer Trépardoux, Bouton's brother-in-law, left in 1893 because de Dion was turning to the petrol engine. According to RM Sotheby's, de Dion and Bouton dominated the early years of the 20th century with petrol cars.
What was new
Not the first automobile; the Louwman Museum writes of its sister vehicle, a De Dion steam quadricycle of 1887, "one of the first usable, and therefore successful, applications of a steam engine in a small motorcar". What separates it from the road locomotive and the steam omnibus, which needed a crew, is the operation: one person, no stoker, 45 minutes to readiness according to RM Sotheby's. It stayed a footnote in its maker's own history: RM Sotheby's states that only about 30 De Dion steamers were built in all, 20 tricycles and four or five quadricycles. On the 1887 run often billed as the first motor race the sources contradict each other: RM Sotheby's gives 20 miles from Paris to Versailles and back at an average of 16 mph and 37 mph on the straights, l'Automobile Ancienne 30 kilometres from the Pont de Neuilly to the Bois de Boulogne at an average of 40 km/h and a top of 60. They agree only that Bouton was the sole entrant.

Further reading