April 2004 Pic of the Month
Transportation Replicas 

In 1963, George DeAngelis posed with his Quadricycle replica at the site where Henry Ford’s Bagley Avenue house once stood. Ford built the original Quadricycle in a shed behind the house. Photo ID B33303

Henry Ford was photographed in the second version of his Quadricycle in late 1896. Photo ID P.O.490

 

The second replica of Ford’s Quadricyle is shown outside the reconstruction of the shed where Henry Ford built the original car. Photo ID B107786-7

As you might expect, we have Henry Ford’s first automobile on display in the museum, the car he built in 1896 and called his Quadricycle. But we also have two operating replicas. Why? The key word is operating. We want to demonstrate Henry’s first car, but don’t want to put the real one at risk by running it.

Creating a replica of Ford’s Quadricycle posed special challenges, for Henry Ford changed the vehicle over time. The first version, which Ford ran for the first time in June 1896, used a bicycle seat, wooden frame rails, and had no cooling system. Ford then improved his automobile with metal rails, stronger wheels, a buggy seat, and a cooling system. No photographs exist of the first version. However, photographs were taken of the second version, shortly before Ford sold the car in late 1896. About 1905, Henry Ford bought the car back, and changed it to yet a third configuration.

Both of our Quadricycle replicas were built by George DeAngelis, a Ford Motor Company employee with a passion for history. The first Quadricycle replica reflects Henry Ford’s third version of the vehicle. George DeAngelis planned the building of this replica as a one-winter project, but it took nearly three years to get the car on the road in the summer of 1963. He had to make most of the parts from scratch, since parts that were available in 1896 were hard to find decades later! DeAngelis did make two changes in the replica: he adapted modern spark plugs in place of the 1896 make-and-break ignition system and added a brake. (Henry Ford apparently stopped his car by putting it in neutral and rubbing the sole of one shoe against a tire!)

Henry Ford had claimed that the Quadricycle could make 10 miles per hour in low gear, and 20 miles per hour in high. However, testing the replica revealed that the engine was not powerful enough to drive the car in high at all, and that maximum speed in low was 18 miles per hour.

The museum was so impressed with the replica that it bought the car from George. It is demonstrated each year in September at the Old Car Festival in Greenfield Village.

In 1990, the museum decided to have George DeAngelis build another replica, showing Ford’s second version improvements as they appeared in the 1896 photograph. The Ford Motor Company Fund graciously agreed to pay for the project. This second car, completed in 1991, has the original style ignition system and no brakes. This second version of the Quadricyle is now displayed in Greenfield Village, in the reconstructed Bagley Avenue shed where Ford built his first car.