gas car featured “good material. Good
workmanship” and “every user of Loco-
mobile will testify to the fact that it is
Easily the Best Built Car in America.”
Three years later, in 1907, Locomo-
bile was “the greatest American car,”
and while still expensive at $2800 for
the Type E 20-hp touring and $4500
for the 35-hp Type H touring, Locomo-
bile’s reputation was established. If the
company and its cars had been anything
less than promised, it’s at the very least
doubtful that many examples would
have sold at what today would be about
$75,300 and $121,000, respectively. The
seven-passenger, 120-inch-wheelbase H
“contains many features which will ap-
peal to those interested in the powerful
touring car De Luxe,” but the compara-
tively affordable E with its fi ve-passen-
ger seating and 96-inch wheelbase was
probably the better value.
Locomobile advertised that “the
quality of this car is, in every detail, the
best that we can produce,” a statement
that could have applied across its entire
range, but instead of positioning the E
as a lower-cost model, it got right to the
point. The Type E “is splendidly adapted
to general service. Solid construction,
convenient size, freedom from tire trou-
ble. Exceedingly stylish and graceful in
appearance” and most importantly 11
decades later, “thoroughly satisfactory
for touring and able to keep up with the
largest touring cars in a hard day’s run.”
The Locomobile experience
“You got what you paid for,” said
Fred Gonet, the Proctorsville, Vt., owner
of the 1908 E shown here, “and it’s just a
phenomenally designed car ... I’ve been
in this all day touring. We did the ’91
tour where we went from Massachusetts
up to Canada, across Canada and back
down through Vermont to Massachu-
setts again in a week and we were fi ne,
ready to go again. You’re not fatigued.
After a full day’s tour, you’re tired from
just being in the wind, but you’re not fa-
tigued.”
While he averages about 2000 miles
in it each year, he’s not the fi rst to have
toured with the Locomobile. He bought
it in 1985 from a friend of a friend, he
explained, and the seller’s primary con-
cern was that the car would be restored
and cared for as
necessary. The
seller was adamant
that its new home
be a good one.
“I had to pass
a test, my kids had
to pass a test, my
wife had to pass a
test,” Gonet said,
“and then he vir-
tually gave it to
us when we were
done.”
The seller had
bought it in 1961 afterhavingspottedit
in a classifi ed ad in Car & Driver, but
Gonet said that the Locomobile had ap-
parently turned up in the 1940s.
“The story I’d gotten,” he continued,
“was that it came out of Wyckoff, New
Jersey. A widow had it — her husband
was going to do something with it — but
he died and at that time, Henry Austin
Clark on Long Island was who to get in
touch with on old cars. She contacted
him.”
Clark bought it, he said, then sold
it to a friend who began its restoration
in 1950 and completed it to run on the
1954 Glidden Tour. It was then sold
again, driven for a few years and eventu-
ally advertised in Car & Driver.
“I’ve got all the bills of sale,” Gonet
said, “because I met the guy who re-
stored it in the early ’50s and he gave
me his whole folder, photographs and
everything, all the bills of sale from
the previous owners, but unfortunately,
I can’t go back any further than about
1949 or ’48....
“It had been toured a bit, but not a
tremendous amount, not nearly as much
as I’ve driven it. The paint was a little
shabby, the seats were cracked, the top
was a little iffy by that time because it
hadn’t been touched since ’52, ’53 when
it was restored until I bought it in ’85. It
had just been driven. It had the wrong
brass on it, all the wrong lamps, so I
found the correct lamps for it and made
the fenders correctly. I did a complete
frame-up on it.
“Mechanically, it was very good.”
During the 1954 Glidden, he said,
the make-and-break ignition had caused
problems and was replaced with a high-tension system. He explained that the
original components were sold to Clark,
who was able to tell him who had bought
them from him. Gonet knew the buyer
and asked whether he still had them. He
did — they were in the same box they’d
been packed in after their replacement
— so Gonet bought them.
“I put most of them back on,” he said.
“I left the high-tension mag because I
drive it and it’s a super ignition system.
It works great, but I did put all the me-
chanics back on, all the make-and-break
system. I just didn’t put the current gen-
erator on it. I use the high-tension mag.
So yeah, I bought all the original parts
back and put them back on again. It was
cool. I was very happy about that.”
Unlike some of its contemporaries
that provide a wrestling match under-
way, he said, the Locomobile is an easy
car to drive.
“It’s still hand-crank,” Gonet said,
“(but) it shifts beautifully, it’s got a
beautiful clutch in it... You’ve got a hand
throttle, but it’s got a gas pedal and the
standard clutch on the left, brake on the
right, standard H-pattern four-speed.
You’ve got to double-clutch downshift-
ing, so you’ve got to bring it up to the
right rpm. Upshifting, listen to it and
it’ll drop right in.”
The brakes are up to the task provid-
ed that the driver recognizes their limita-
tions, as he said that both the hand brake
and the foot brake can lock the wheels.
They both also fade, so he said a lower
gear and alternating between the brakes
is sometimes the smart approach.
“That way,” he said, “they stay cool.
I haven’t met a hill I haven’t survived.”http://www.oldcarsweekly.com September 5, 2019 ❘ 29
The button throttle might take some adjustment, but the
clutch and brake pedals in their conventional positions and
the four-speed transmission’s standard H-pattern combine
to make the Locomobile a fairly uncomplicated car for the
modern driver.