The Duryea is widely considered the first successful gasoline-powered car built in the United States, produced by the two namesake brothers, Charles and J. Frank. After building their original horseless carriage in 1893 and testing it in Springfield, Massachusetts, the brothers established the Duryea Motor Wagon Company, which became the first American manufacturer to build an automobile with intent for serious production and sale.

In the late 1890s the Duryea brothers acrimoniously went separate ways, and in March of 1900, Charles Duryea relocated to Pennsylvania and established the Duryea Power Company in Reading, with backing from local scion Herbert Sternbergh. The Reading-built Duryea was originally created as a three-wheeler and later as a conventional four-wheeled model, both powered by a three-cylinder, 10-horsepower engine with two-speed transmission on a leaf-sprung 66-inch-wheelbase chassis. Steering was by tiller bar, of which Charles Duryea remained a devout adherent versus the newfangled steering wheel.

This car was produced for a remarkable seven years, and the Standard Catalog of American Cars recounts that about 300 were made. Today it is believed that only about 20 of the Reading Duryeas remain in existence, each a wonderful throwback to the dawn of American motoring.

CHASSIS NUMBER 265: THE MUSEUM PIECE

Charles Duryea, perhaps understandably, remained proud of his product well into his dotage. In 1936, writing to a representative of Henry Ford’s burgeoning Michigan museum, then known as the Edison Institute, he noted that he had “recently located or relocated several of the pre-1907, three-cylinder Duryeas…they served as sources of information for many of the 500 or more who undertook to make gasoline autos in the next 10 years. I do not know if you have one or desire one. Naturally the older they get the more they are prized by those who have or seek them.”

The hint was taken, and through Mr. Duryea’s auspices the car offered here was acquired for the Edison Institute from Martin Welch of Maxwell, Indiana. Mr. Duryea commented that Welch was the second owner, having acquired it in 1919 from a Dr. Richards of Dayton, Kentucky, according to a period newspaper article.

Following a thorough reconditioning, the Duryea remained in the Edison Institute and Henry Ford Museum until the famous 1985 deaccession auction, when it was purchased by the late David Berckmueller, only its fourth owner since new. It has remained in good hands since, and is still in extremely attractive and very usable overall condition. It would be a welcome sight at any event celebrating American automobiles, in particular Antique Automobile Club of America events and, of course, the Old Car Festival at the Henry Ford, a location that this particular vehicle knows especially well.