The brawny over-engineering and ample power of American LaFrance’s fire engines made retired chassis quite appealing to performance-minded young men of the 1930s. One of the reasons it is so rare to find an intact apparatus of the Teens or Twenties is that it was the fate of many to become a “speedster”—their bodies junked, and replaced by two simple seats, often on a shortened frame. It was a great formula for performance on a budget. Over the years resellers would occasionally concoct bold stories of their car having been a factory executive special, something that American LaFrance built for itself in a hot-blooded moment. In almost all instances, however, that tale is a fabrication.

The automobile offered here is, quite literally, the only exception. It is the sole surviving factory-built, from-new American LaFrance automobile, noted by historian John Peckham as one of fewer than 25 passenger cars built by the firm between 1903 and 1911. Peckham notes that the few surviving photographs of the vehicles were labeled as “Chief’s Cars,” but “I have not been able to find information on any fire department that ever had one. My personal feeling is that these experimental machines wound up in the hands of Corporate officers, and never saw any fire service.”

The car utilizes the same immense 70 horsepower, T-head four-cylinder engine, with 5-by-6-inch bore and stroke and total displacement of 575 cubic inches, and a few other components from the contemporary 1911 gasoline-powered fire trucks. As described by Mr. Peckham, these were mounted, however, to a unique, shorter 127-inch chassis frame, with a “kick-up” at the rear accommodating platform springs. Power was delivered through a special high-speed differential transaxle; the rear wheels were fitted directly to the transaxle via regular half-shafts, eliminating the chain drive system, in what American LaFrance called a “road transmission.” In an era when Mercer and the like were beginning to develop light, strong fast cars, American LaFrance, in typical fashion, went for brawn, with the result being a speedster some three times the size of a Mercer and nearly the scale of a Simplex!

Mr. Peckham noted that the car was last registered in New York in 1923, and purchased by a gentleman in Ohio around 1953. It is believed that he was one state off, as it were, as historian Beverly Rae Kimes stated that the car, about this time, wound its way into the early Barney Pollard collection in Detroit. Her fellow historian Hal Fillinger recalls that other enthusiasts recalled seeing the car when it was in the Pollard barns.

At the 1975 Pollard auction it was acquired by the American LaFrance Corporate Collection; photographs in the file show it to have been largely intact, down to the bodywork and the distinctive Type 8 tag on the firewall, and Peckham noted had no holes in the frame to indicate traditional metal fenders had ever been mounted. Restorer Jim Cox, of Sussex Motor and Coachworks in Matamoras, Pennsylvania, recounted to Mr. Peckham that if not raced, it had at least been run very hard, but had been off the road since its last registration.

Following a restoration by Mr. Cox for the Collection in 1987, the Type 8 was delivered to Harry Figgie, then-owner of the American LaFrance company, in November of that year. In 1988 it was shown by Mr. Cox in Antique Automobile Club of America competition at Hershey, receiving the national W. Emmert Swigart Memorial Cup as the outstanding restoration of a rare and unusual automobile entered in a National Meet. It went on to be the Salon feature of the December 1989 issue of Road & Track, in an article penned by Kimes, who also happened to be Mr. Cox’s spouse.

Exhibited in the collection since restoration, the roadster continues to display its quality restoration, with body and paint both still in very good condition, with correct striping and period brass lighting equipment and accessories, including carbide generator and horn. The dashboard retains its correct instruments in good condition, while the seats are leather upholstery in the correct pattern. Under the hood exhibits some aging to the finishes, and a thorough servicing is recommended before use on the road.

In a world of speedsters, this is indisputably held by American LaFrance historians to be the sole surviving genuine article—an American LaFrance automobile, with the rakishness built-in from new.