Product attributes
- The Quadricycle was Henry Ford's first attempt at building a gasoline-powered automobile. The machine was simple, using common materials (angle iron for the frame, a leather belt and chain drive for the transmission, and a buggy seat) and a two-cylinder 4-horsepower engine based on the Kane-Pennington design as described in the January 9, 1896 issue of American Machinist magazine. Henry Ford added an ignition system of his own design to the engine and added water jackets to the cylinders when air cooling was not sufficient. And it included a single-chain transmission with two speeds (10 and 20 miles) selected by a clutch that engaged twin belt drives. There were no brakes, no neutral gear, and no reverse gear, but it included a doorbell as a horn. The Quadricycle had a 49-inch wheelbase and was 79 inches long overall, while being only 45 inches wide and 43 inches high. Although it was relatively small and light, the vehicle's four large bicycle tires offered limited steering capability, with the driver steering it from the steering tiller.
The original Quadricycle was bare bones, utilizing common materials for its construction.
Henry Ford during a drive on his Quadricycle.
Henry Ford had been working as a chief engineer at the main plant of the Edison Illuminating Co. when he began work on the Quadricycle in his garage. He completed the Quadricycle in 1896 and found it would not fit through his garage, which he took an axe to in order to get out. Once out of his garage, Ford drove the 500-pound Quadricycle down Grand River Avenue in Detroit, cruising through major thoroughfares and only suffering one breakdown from a faulty spring, leading to many considering the drive a success.
Later that year, Henry Ford sold the Quadricycle for $200—money he would spend to build his second car. The second car was another Quadricycle that improved upon the original design, after receiving financial backing from William C. Maybury, the Mayor of Detroit, and other wealthy citizens of Detroit, which he used to form the Detroit Automobile Company in 1899, and would be dissolved in 1901 after producing a few more prototypes of the "horseless carriage" Quadricycle but never reaching production. In 1904, with the success of the Ford Motor Company, Henry Ford repurchased the Quadricycle for $65.
The Ford Quadricycle featured in American Machinist where Ford would find some ideas for his horseless carriage.
The Quadricycle was not the first "horseless carriage" or automobile designed and built, not even the first to grace the streets of Detroit, as Ford's friend, Charles Brady King, had driven his gasoline-powered automobile through Detroit on March 1896, a few months before Ford's Quadricycle toured those same streets. And this was a full ten years following the Benz Patent-Motorwagen, which was produced in 1885. However, Ford's invention was a step in the progression toward the mass-production vehicles that would later be produced at the Ford Motor Company. And, at the time, Henry Ford was partaking in a community of individuals who were building motorized carriages, which was imperative to his own development of the Quadricycle.
