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ID an antique car


DaveM

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Thanks for trying. For what it's worth, the field where the car is parked is in Amesbury, Ma, where the Bailey Electric car was made. Could this be an electric car?

The field is at the top of the steepest hill around. I'm impressed that cars back then could make the climb (then again I know nothing about the power of their motors).

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Can't help with the ID, but in terms of hill-climbing capability, most cars of that era had from 25 horsepower (small cars) to perhaps 50 HP (larger cars). There were a few with higher HP ratings, but they were rare. What gave the cars hill-climbing ability was their rear axle ratio -- 4.5 to 1 was pretty typical, and sometimes they could even be 5.0 to 1 or numberically higher. They also had low gears in the transmission -- today, we'd call their first gears "granny" gears. Another note on horsepower. Your modern car only uses 50-80 horsepower to cruise. The rest is for acceleration. Most modern cars are grossly overpowered.

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The park is named Victoria Batchelder Park on top of Powwow Hill (Powow Hill or PoHill) in Amesbury. The land was owned by a Civil War veteran, George Batchelder, and dedicated in memory of his wife in 1925 (she died in 1917, George died in 1928). I'm not sure if that is George Batchelder in the picture.

All that is left of the pavilion is one metal post and the concrete floor.

This is a pic of the dedication ceremony in 1925, and the next pic of the car was in the same packet that I copied (could this be an electric car?):

Dr Watson, I just noticed that you live in MA - anywhere near Amesbury?

oi6mhd.jpg

6ymtf9.jpg

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It's a fair guess the second car is a Bailey Electric, based on the illustration in The Standard Catalog of American Cars 1805-1942. Left hand drive with a steering wheel, unique feature, most electrics were tiller steered. The wide placement of the headlights is another common electric car feature.

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Just yell when I'm too far off topic.

This pic of a motorcycle was also in the batch. Looks like a female driver.

What kind of power and battery life did the Bailey Electric cars have?

Maybe we can run the plates on the car and bike...(jk)

2s6573t.jpg

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  • 2 weeks later...

Interesting update.

I was driving past a school that is located at the base of the hill in the pic, and there was the car that I'm trying to ID parked on the grass. I went home and made a copy of the pic, then I went back to the school and compared the pic to the real thing. To me, they were identical. It was kinda weird, since this car I was looking at was parked about a quarter mile from where the one in the pic was in 1925. I went into the school and found that one of the workers in the school owned the car outside. He came out to the car - his was a 1923 Model T (I hope I remember correctly - shoulda written down the info). Anyways, he said the car in the pic was the same model as his, just a few years older. He said the top on the one in the pic was pretty hard to put up compared to his "later" model. He knew the hill well, and said that he was surprised that anyone would have driven that car up there, especially when the road was dirt. He explained about the oil pumping system and how it wouldn't have worked well on that steep incline, and coming down might be a problem with the brakes.

Anyways, it was pretty cool to see an almost identical car that close to where the one in the pic was.

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