In 1917 we had electric cars, and actually there were enough of them, that it could have looked like the future was going to be electric vehicles. This was possibly sidetracked by the Rockefeller’s, because they owned Standard Oil, and wanted vehicles to run on gasoline instead of electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detroit_Electric
@John Brunner Here's a pic or two of the 1933 Farmall. They had at least two, the F-12 and the F-20. That was my birth year and my mama pulled me on her cotton sack around one of those new shiny things. Yeah, we passed it when we went to weigh up. Later I learned it wasn't far at all but it felt far being drug on a cotton sack, pulled over cotton stalks and all only to be tumbled off so the sack could be weighed. '33 was good year for me though. I'm here and I've been here a good while. You think this is weird. Blame Joan Didion of which I have been a fan of her writing. She said, If I thought it and wanted to use it, it was true in my mind. I like that, it fits right in with today. But back to old cars, my first car, a 1929 Buick was well on the way to being worn out in that year.
Thanks, Bill!!! That Farmall was a real workhorse. Ours was over 40 years old when we got it, and had no paint...but it fired up every time and never met a stump it couldn't pull. Long before that we owned a Travelall (Harvester sure loved their "-all" suffixes.) I don't know what year it was. We owned it in the early 60s, and it sure was not new. Regarding Didion: I've never crossed paths with her work. I see she was born in '34, so she's a contemporary of yours (you likely knew that already.) I don't know if she still writes...she actually published a collection of previously written essays this year. My first car was a '63 Lincoln. I was 18. A friend found a pair of them (his & hers) at an estate sale...$1,000 for the set. That set my "going forward" expectation level. For the next 15 years I always paid less than $500 for a car, with just one exception. Those days ain't coming back. Heck, these days insurance costs more than that.
My buick cost me $25.00. My second car was a '39 Lincoln Zepher, $325. It needed a ring and valve job in the worst way. It was probably filled with thick oil. I drove it a few months until it started smoking like a choo-choo train then sold it, cut my losses and was afoot until I was able to buy a motorcycle. I'm not much smarter today.
I almost bought a '59 Plymouth. It had them big rear fins. As I recall the speedometer had columns that would fill up. As you accelerated the 10MPH bar rose & filled up the spot, then the 20MPH bar would start to rise and fill up that spot, etc. This was 25 MPH: Or perhaps it was like a sideways thermometer: It burnt oil like a mosquito fogger, and had a bunch of oil pooled on top of the intake manifold. The guy told me he didn't have any regular gas around and put some 2 cycle mixed gas in it "just to get it running." Yeh. Right.
The Dudly Bug was manufactured in Menominee, Michigan, ten miles from where I grew up, by the Dudly Tool Company, which produced cars from 1913 to 1915. Only a hundred of them were built.
Early Buick's looked more like combines than cars, the drive belts certainly resembled modern combine belts or up until the past 20 years when the industry went all hydraulic drive systems
This came on my facebook feed today, and I wanted to share it. This was a military vehicle developed back in the 1950’s, it looks like and it is pretty amazing. I wonder why we didn’t keep making them , or if they just morphed into something else ?
This thread reminds me of the wallpaper I put up in my room when I was a kid...nothing but cars of the early 20th century. The one that sticks out even today was the REO Speedwagon: REO Motor Company (founded by Ransom E. Olds) made cars from 1915 to 1967 (Wiki also cites an end date of 1975.) The REO Speedwagon was a pickup truck of sorts, made from 1915-1953. Man, I miss the days when you could tell the year/make/model of a car from 1/4 mile away, regardless of whether it was coming towards you or driving away. They had personality...almost an identity.
I like the old Studebaker Cars and Trucks. Everything was overbuilt, for example toggle switches instead of push buttons. One model car had what was named a "Climatizer", a smaller radiator mounted under the front seat. The engine air cleaner systems looked like big truck air cleaner or even some early aircraft. The cars were unique and you didn't know which end you were looking at if you weren't familiar with the cars. My brother had an early President and it ran when he bought it in San Diego, engine went bad and he had it rebuilt and it sat in my Mothers garage for 10 years before he finally sold the car and engine. He had to buy one connecting rod new and it cost 75 dollars, now that was in the early 70s. I've seen similar high prices for modern car parts, like an Opel GT oil pressure switch after they were discontinued, it was 75 dollars from a San Francisco warehouse. When the car was new it would have been about 10 or 11 bucks. That was the 1.9 cubic inch engine, I think my memory is correct on the displacement. I hated working on the GT models, it was one of the first models in the USA that required the engine come down out of the car. No dealer was prepared to do that and had no equipment, it was up to the guy working on the car to devise a way to drop the engine without killing himself. In the past I have just laid the short block on it's side into the engine compartment and lifted it into place by hand, then installed the cylinder head, it was less work but still a pain due to restricted space.