The oldest cars are now well over 100 years old and they are almost never seen on public roads or even most car shows. Today they seem so primitive, it’s easy to forget they were the most technologically advanced consumer products ever up to that point. The first few decades of American cars saw a rapid evolution of engineering and style with ingenuity, industriousness, and entrepreneurial drive on full display in the super-competitive early automobile market. I recently got a rare chance to see a wide selection of these pioneer cars, with some familiar marques and some I’d never heard of.
Admittedly, I have not historically had a lot of interest and an almost shameful lack of knowledge in these oldest of cars, which I think was mainly owing to lack of exposure. At this point in my life, though, I find myself more open to less common cars and new automotive experiences. I unintentionally got that in spades in January when I was able to make it to the Arizona auctions where there were an unusually large number of pre-war classics.
The RMSotheby’s event featured Janet Cussler’s car collection. The name didn’t ring a bell until I realized she is the wife of Clive Cussler, the best-selling novelist who died in 2020. They lived in Arizona and he was known to be a big car collector (which for me would be the biggest perk of being super rich). There is still a Clive Cussler Auto Museum in Colorado, so this wasn’t a complete liquidation. There were over 30 vehicles, all Brass and Full Classic era, most of which I’ll show in four parts, today looking at models through 1912, a.k.a the Brass Era (aprox. 1897-1915) when lights and other fixtures were typically made of brass. Taken chronologically, these give a good sense of the evolution of American cars over their early years.
Click on the links on each car to go to the auction page for more story and lots of high-quality photos.
1903 Oldsmobile Model R Runabout ($45k). The original Oldsmobile Runabout (1901-07) was a bestseller and one of the most famous pioneer cars, but I’ve never seen one in person before.
Its flat, water-cooled, one-cylinder engine got 5hp from 95c.i.(1.6L) and ran up to 20mph, which is about as fast as one would probably want to go on the primitive roads of the turn of the century.
It’s called a “Curved Dash” Olds, even though it doesn’t have anything we would recognize as a dashboard (a term originally referring to the front panel of a carriage or sleigh). In fact, about the only thing this rather gangly conveyance has in common with a modern automobile is a gasoline-powered engine and four pneumatic tires.
FYI: Many of my pictures have people in the background and are not the best quality ever, for which I apologize. It was a popular event and in the few seconds I had when no one was blocking the shot, I clicked away
1906 Packard Model S Touring ($112k). Packard made their first cars in 1899, so this 1906 was a pretty early model. It was the first year two wheelbases were offered (119in here, 108in available with the Runabout). 1906 also introduced a new 349.9 c.i. (5.0L) T-head 4-cylinder engine putting out 24hp. The car and engine were substantially larger than the previous year’s Model N and pretty advanced in 1906.
1907 Cadillac Model M Touring ($44k). This was only five years into Cadillac production and two years before being acquired by General Motors. Henry Leland’s focus was on making precision, standardized, interchangeable parts, a necessity for the massive production levels the industry would soon see. The “Standard Of The World” slogan was adopted in 1908, referring to this precision approach more than it was implying Cadillacs were the most premium, since they were far from the most exclusive cars at this point. They were a volume producer in 7th place or better in sales for their entire first decade.
In 1907, the Model M was one of their lower-priced models, with its 10hp 98c.i.(1.6L) one-cylinder engine. Cadillac started making larger, 20hp four-cylinder models in 1905 and phased out “ones” in 1908.
1908 Columbus Autobuggy ($42k). Here we have an evolutionary dead end. If you’ve ever heard of this car, my hat is off to you. To the uninitiated, at first this seems like some crazy antique Donk, then after absorbing it for a few minutes one realizes this is a true “horseless carriage”, existing somewhere between a horsedrawn buggy and an actual automobile. It’s an Autobuggy.
Based in its namesake Ohio city, Columbus was a major buggy manufacturer in the late 1800’s, then had some transitional success in the very early turn-of-the-century motorcar business. It might have had more long term impact, but a flood in 1913 wiped out their operation and they never recovered. Harvey Firestone worked for the company before leaving in 1900 to start a tire company. Insert jokes about the Autobuggy’s tires here…
It might look appropriate being pulled by one or two horses, but it actually had ten horsepower from its twin cylinder 100.5 c.i. engine.
1910 Buick Model 10 Touring ($24k). Buick was a top seller in the early market, vying with Ford for the top spot from 1907-1910. William Durant acquired Buick in its first few years and used it as the foundation for General Motors starting in 1908.
The 22.5 horsepower that the four-cylinder 165c.i. engine made testifies to the rapidly advancing state of engineering compared to the three-year-older Cadillac above and even almost matching the output of the much larger Packard engine of four years earlier.
The leather seats have some cracking, which is excusable as I believe this is the only car here that claims to be unrestored. That’s 114 year old leather!
1911 Ford Model T Runabout (26k). Only three years into its run, this tidy Model T looks especially brassy and old-timey. T sales started fairly slowly but increased exponentially every year. 1911 is the first year Ford started running away with sales, with 3 or more times the production of any other maker. Henry Ford’s moving assembly line started in 1914, enabling a dizzying cycle of price drops and production increases. From 69k in 1911, it was 500k in 1915 rising to a peak of 1.8 million in 1923. Among other accomplishments, the Model T cemented the left-hand-drive steering wheel as the national standard.
Blue is likely the correct color because Ford didn’t adopt the “any color so long as it’s black” policy until 1914, by which time they’d also dropped any brass trim. The Model T came with a 177c.i. (2.9L) four cylinder making 22hp, which as we’ve seen so far was not bad output and good for 35 or 40 mph. Four was rapidly becoming the minimum acceptable number of cylinders, an expectation that the T undoubtedly helped establish.
1911 REO Thirty Touring ($44k) With a 30hp four-cylinder engine (couldn’t find a reference for c.i.d.) in a relatively light body, this could be a very early musclecar! Or maybe not, but it was a popular car in its day. Ransom E. Olds left Oldmobile in 1905 to found REO (after his intials, of course), which made cars through 1936, then continued making trucks under that name until 1975 (though owned by other companies after 1954).
1911 Pierce-Arrow Model 66-A Runabout ($302k). Brass-Era luxury cars are known for their large engine displacements. Pierce’s Model 66 takes the prize, though. To this day it holds the record for the largest displacement engine ever sold in a production car with its 825c.i. (14L) straight six, rated at 66hp (hence the model name, though it was probably closer to 100). The absurd engine size was necessary at this point to get the class-leading power and torque Pierce was shooting for. The modern mind struggles to fathom such low output, 45 years before the Chrysler 300B hit the one horsepower per cubic inch benchmark. The most listless of Malaise-Era engines look like powerhouses by comparison.
This 1911 was made early in the 66’s run from 1910-1918, during Pierce’s most dominant period. Trademark headlights-in-the-fenders wouldn’t be adopted until 1914. Increased competition in the 20’s diminished their position, leading them to be purchased by Studebaker in 1928. Pierce-Arrow’s very high-end cars were a tough sell in the Depression, with the marque out of business in 1938.
An episode of Jay Leno’s Garage featured his excellent 1918 Model 66.
1912 Winton Model 17-C Seven-Passenger Touring ($179k). This is quite a large car and with a 48hp 457c.i. (7.49L) L-head straight six, it was powerful for its time and handsome in a square-jawed way. Though Winton is one of the brands I had never heard of, they were a prominent make in the very early prestige car market. They were among the earliest American car makers in 1897, stopped making automobiles after 1924, but had long term success making engines for trains, boats and other large industrial uses. Winton Engine Co. was bought by GM in 1930 and is still operating as Electro-Motive Diesel (no longer part of GM).
Come back for Part 2 next week to see more great pioneer cars.
For a period of several months, during my early teens, I took a strong interest in the earliest years of the automobile. The level of excitement and innovation around the car, was very comparable to the EV industry today.
I remember being very impressed, at the number of books available at my small town library, as well as my high school library, on the topic. I loved learning about the cross-country, and round-the-world speed attempts. And engineering improvements happening at lightning speed. Many fledgling car makers already had factories, in both the US and Canada.
Lot of info here in Canada, on cars like the Thomas Flyer. And early speed demon characters like Barry Oldfield. Fun reading about an eight-wheeled car, like the Octoauto. Plenty of heroes, and great leaders. Canada had an impressive number of car makers, for such a small country. One of the best known being the Gray-Dort, made in Chatham, Ontario. The volume of change and consolidation in the auto industry, was stunning, before the Great Depression. I look back fondly, on all the research I did at the time. And remember, much of it.
Correct name, just came to me. Barney Oldfield!
A Winton was the first car to be driven coast-to-coast in 1903 from San Francisco to New York by Dr Horatio Nelson Jackson of Burlington VT and his mechanic in a time when there were virtually no roads except in a few major cities. Winton was a very well known high quality make in the early days of US motoring, alnong with Packard (2nd make to go cross country.)
PBS/Ken Burns produced an excellent program on this pioneering feat entitled “Horatio’s Drive”, that was recently re-aired after first being shown about 20 years ago.
Winton, in the early days, was primarily known to history for two things: Insulting James Ward Packard when he made suggestions on how to improve the car after it broke down on Mr. Packard on the drive home, and, losing a race to Henry Ford which made Ford well enough known to get backers and start in automobile production.
They were huge in that first decade, but were out of business by the mid-Twenties.
Glad to know Mature women write first. Be that as it may I wonder how Horse Power was determined back then.
The Cussler Museum is worth the time, Arvada is a suburb NW of downtown Denver.
Love the Pierce Arrow.
Wonderful article. Winton was the first car with a self-starter in 1908, using a pneumatic compressor and stored air. The air was also available to inflate tires. Pierce and a few others followed suit until the Kettering system took over in 1913.
RE: Low power output of the enormous engines –
1) Gasoline was highly variable in quality. I could find any octane numbers from the 1910s but when Sinclair came out with 72 octane in 1926 that was a big deal. One can only guess when you bought a can of gasoline from a druggist or a blacksmith. Thus manufacturers had to limit compression to avoid knock which could destroy an engine.
2) Machining capability was not very precise. Even if adequate fuel had been available building a high compression engine would not have been possible.
Enjoyed the article. I have always been a big fan of pre-war and brass era cars. When I started going to shows @’70, Cerved Dash Olds, Ts, Perice Arrow with the funny fender mounted head lights, steam cars, etc. were the norm. They’d putter around the show grounds and were a common sight in local parades. Today they are museum pieces or in a special section at big shows replaced by ’50s/60s stuff that guys my age remember as old cars growing up. Sad but these beautiful machines garner little interest in a waning hobby.
The story I remember about Winton was that a fellow named James Packard bought one of Winton’s cars and was disappointed. He called Alexander Winton to share his disappointment and to make suggestions for improvements. Winton was a hot-tempered Scot who told Packard something along the lines of “there’s nothing wrong with our cars, and if you’re so smart, build a better one yourself.” Which Mr. Packard did.
The Buick is interesting in being built the year before Walter Chrysler was poached from a locomotive manufacturer to become the GM of Buick, where he learned the automotive business inside-out.
These really old cars are fascinating to me. They are first hand testimony to how the automotive pioneers figured their way through many of the problems modern automotive engineers still grapple with.
These cars have always been rare at shows. Back in the late 1960’s when I first got involved in that AACA, brass era cars were almost never seen at local shows, unless you were talking Model T’s. (Back then, the antique hobby was about 33% Model T’s, 33% Model A’s, and the remainder was a mixture of Packards and pretty much everything else pre-WWII.). About the only time you could be guaranteed of seeing anything this vintage was at the AACA National Meet in Hershey.
I didnt know about the Winton and the EMD connection. I wonder if any of the guys who designed the early cars were still around designing and testing the diesel electric locomotive in the 1930s. Talk about a game changer, put steam locomotives out of business in less than 10 years.
The REO company made cars until 1938, when they became all-truck. From 1933 on, they were the first American automaker to offer an automatic transmission( perhaps a hint to future offerings of this history.).
What a great story, Jon!
My history with very old cars is limited, but once many years ago I was lucky enough to witness a “rally” of brass-era cars pass by my cabin on Lake Samish in Washington state. I got to hear them run and wave to the drivers (some of whom were in period dress). Something I will never forget.
Superb pictures and lots of new info gleaned. The Pierce is impressive, but the Reo is the looker of the bunch.
One cannot miss the magnificent detail and engineering that went into producing these pioneers of the auto industry.
Thanks for such a great article. It has inspired me to seek out more history about these vehicles.
“Winton Engine Co. was bought by GM in 1930 and is still operating as Electro-Motive Diesel (no longer part of GM).”
Sort of. Electro-Motive was a separate company started in 1922. It did rely on Winton engines, and developed a close working relationship with the latter company. GM bought both in 1930, folded the Electro-Motive staff into Winton for two years (1933-1934), then pulled them back out as a separate subsidiary in 1935, and reorganized Winton as Cleveland Diesel Engine Division at the end of 1938.
Good overview here:
https://vintagedieseldesign.com/2019/12/07/cleveland-diesel-engine-division-gms-war-hero-turned-ugly-stepsister/
Good context, thanks! Of course, part of the art of writing these wide scope articles is keeping each individual section pithy and the word count low. Simplification works as long as the facts aren’t actually wrong. It helps to have people flesh out the details in the comments so people can get more of the story.