cars, cheese, & marmalade
La Marquise
La Marquise is the world's oldest running automobile, as of 2011.[1] It is an 1884 model made by Frenchmen De Dion, Bouton and Trépardoux. The car was a quadricycle prototype named for de Dion's mother.[2]
In 1887, the Count of Dion drove La Marquise in an exhibition that has been called the world's first car race, though no other car showed up.[2] It made the 32-odd-kilometre (20 mile) Paris-to-Versailles round trip at an average speed of 25.5 km/h (almost 16 mph). The following year, he beat Bouton in a three-wheeler with an average speed of 29 km/h (19 mph).[2]
Fueled by coal, wood and bits of paper, the car takes 30–40 minutes to build up enough steam to drive. Top speed is 61 km/h (38 mph).[3]
As the oldest car, it wore the number "0" in the 1996 London to Brighton Veteran Car Run.[2] The vehicle was sold at the 2007 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance for $3.52 million.[4] It sold again in 2011 for $4.6 million, a record price for an early automobile.[1]
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Already in a rough outline, Uncle Bubba's Life Chapter Two may be along in due course, but in the meantime I'm adding bits and pieces to Chapter One. As for now, an old (he's about four years younger than I am, though, as is everyone else) Navy buddy challenged me with a picture of a car that was obviously first of 20th century at the latest, looks more like before Henry Ford got his start, and, enlarged, the name on the side was easy to read: La Marquise, so google it.
I was totally unaware of this car, don't think it even shows up in the Floyd Clymer book of cars that my aunt EG gave me one Xmas back when I was maybe thirteen. From that book, which I read nothing else whatsoever for months, I saw a couple of other cars most folks never heard of though, the eight-wheel Reeves Octoauto
and its corporate sibling the Sextoauto.
We're talking 1911, long years after the French car. How'd you like having to parallel park one of those suckers on your drivers license exam?
Couple other interesting car pics this morning,
and sitting up in bed here with breakfast of hot black coffee and, no bread so as to ward off what Joe called carbo-coma, a saucer of beautiful homemade marmalade and small bits of Port Salut cheese. Picked up with an oyster fork. I learned as a boy that, like cheese and honey, cheese and marmalade is a superlative combination.
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