What Was America's First Car

[Dave Reese]

At America On Wheels we have two very early American Cars.

The oldest is the Electrobat IV of 1895. This was built by Henry G. Morris and Pedro Salon in 1895. This was a built a year after their first Electrobat which was over two tons, while the IV weighed only 800 pounds.

 

But to me, the 1891 Nadig is more exciting. The Nadig Brothers of Allentown made this vehicle by removing the one-cylinder engine from their 1889 car and replacing it with the two-cylinder engine that is still on the car. The car was allowed to deteriorate in storage over the years, and has not been restored, but you can see that it is the car that is in the photographs of it from the 1930's. I had made runs from Allentown to Coopersburg and back a few years before the Duryea Brothers first brought their internal combustion car onto the streets in 1893. But the Nadigs never went into production, so the Duryea was the first American car with an internal combustion engine to go into commercial production for sale. The Nadig is pictured here.

 

Maybe there are other cars that were on American Roads before these two. Who has information on any earlier cars?