Elephant in the Room

[butlersrangers]

No one said anything about "The Elephant in the Room". Mr. Browning's car has an oil leak!

[FredC]

Even the cars from the 50s that I owned leaked more than modern cars. If those puddles were already there before they took the photo that was poor salesmanship. I think I see a chain drive to the rear axle? If so, there probably was no rear gear box to leak.
A couple of other elephants in the room if you ask me. Upholstered seats and no armor for the driver or gunner. The machine gunner/driver needed to be a midget to see down the sights.
Anyway, in the days of calvary and single shot rifles this would have inspired fear.

[butlersrangers]

'Name that Car'?

[FredC]

Me no wanna guess on that. I own bits and pieces of an early 30s Willys Overland, I had a friend tell me what year was the latest it could have been because of the wooden spokes and hubs. He has since died so my sources of old car info are gone.

The auto in your photo if it still existed would certainly be at home at a Fort Hood museum. We visited cousins in Killeen and saw many armored vehicles loaded on trains. I guess they are so heavy that trucking them was difficult or out of the question.

[butlersrangers]

Outside of the Browning designed Colt model 1895 machine gun, the car in the picture has no connection to J.M. Browning.
(I was just joking about the ownership).

The car photograph was recently used in an NRA article, posted on the internet, about the model 1895 "potato-digger".
The author captioned the car in the photo as a "tin lizzie", a nickname for Henry Ford's Model-T.
The chain-drive and hood are clearly not a Ford model.

This got me wondering about the brand of the early automobile and looking at old car pictures.

I quickly eliminated Ford, Duryea, Studebaker and REO automobiles.

[butlersrangers]

I finally found a 'Roadster' that mirrored the hood, fenders, suspension, wheels & hubs, right-side steering-wheel and chain drive of the 'touring car' in the first post.

(Having a brand name allowed me to better search and eventually stumble onto the original photo's context).

[Parashooter]

Franklin?!

[butlersrangers]

A Syracuse, N.Y. made, Franklin Cross model 1905.

[FredC]

Sure is an interesting vehicle. I missed the bucket seats on the original black and white photo. Lights are placed very differently on the color photo version as well as the rear seat in the potato digger photo. Looks like very early in the automobile's history ordering them with different customized accessories became a thing.

One of the few recognizable parts of my "antique" car:

OverlandHubCoverRS.jpg (316.75 KiB) Viewed 921 times

Some might call my antique a pile of rust with trees growing out it.

[waterman]

In 1968, I graduated from the College of Forestry in Syracuse. Franklin was still in business. If you had an old Franklin car, they would work on it.