Historic Hood River
Road Trip!
Notes
It looks like they’ve packed up the old Chalmers Motor Company automobile for a camping trip. This is from the Thompson family album, and that may be Earl Franz at the wheel.
The date is a bit confusing. We see a 1911 or 1912 Chalmers in this album, but this one is set up differently. It may be a year or two later. This print appears after some 1917 images in the album. The album appears to hold to the chronology pretty carefully, so I suspect this was a 1913 or so Chalmers photographed in 1917. Since I can’t make out the last digit of the year on the plate, we’ll have to focus on the great job they’ve done packing the car to head up into the hills.
Too bad most cars don’t have running boards anymore. They’re a lot easier to get to than roof racks.
Dale Nicol
Arthur, I think the car is most likely a 1911 Model 30 Pony Tonneau since the drivers door is missing. Not sure they made this model in 1912.
With all the stuff lashed down on the car, it looks like the right rear tire could use more air!
L.E.
I hope they are making one stop and camping. Can’t imagine making a road trip, having to pack all of this up every morning.
Marilyn
With all that cargo it would really be a pain if they had engine trouble.
Roger H Sheldrake
Dale, It doesn’t look as though that car has front brakes. Maybe among other things they have an anchor to through out?
Dale Nicol
Roger, how right you are!
Most cars at that time only had rear brakes, however the Model-T had a transmission band brake and rear drum brakes connected to the hand lever on the left side by the clutch pedal……still did not stop very fast.
An anchor like a drift boat trails off the stern would help!
kmb
A right hand drive car from back when they couldn’t figure out what side of the road to drive on? Google tells me that Sotheby’s sold one of these for $71,500 back in 2016,
Dale Nicol
Ford pushed the auto industry to left hand driving when the Model-T was introduced in late 1908 as a 1909 model. As Fords sales grew with in about 5 years , most of the other car manufacturers switched to left hand steering/driving.