9 replies to this topic

[ReWind]

Click on this website, stroll down and click on "Paris Races" and then click on each year. What you will get are quite detailed results from the early motor races - the best I found on the net as yet.
Thank you, Darren Galpin!

What puzzles me are the various classes or types of the participating vehicles.

I have an idea what a "Heavy Car/Grosse Voiture" or a "Light Car/Voiture Legère" or a "Voiturette/Vetturette" or even a "Cyclecar" was. Also I noticed that some of the races were not exclusively for cars but for motor cycles, too.

But on Darren Galpin's website you will find "Cycle", "Bicycle", "Tricycle" and - to top it all - "Quadricycle".

I can imagine that the difference between Bi-, Tri- and Quadricycles lies in the number of wheels. But then: Is a 4-wheel-cycle not in fact a car? What did a Quadricycle look like? And what seperated it from a proper car?

Is a "Cycle" identical to a two-wheeled "Motor Cycle"?

Eventually: At the 1902 Paris-Vienna race four "Bicycles" are listed (Bucquet and Labitte on Werner in 52nd resp. 58th place, Krieger and Podesenick on Laurin-Klement in 66th resp. 67th place). Is a "Bicycle" not in fact a two-wheeler without an engine?

Does it mean these four men were in fact bike-riders pedalling against motor cycles and cars over nearly 1000 kilometres for four days? This is where my imagination definitely ends. :

So many questions. Help! (And pictures, please!;))

[Wolf]

Hey, You're forgetting 'monocycle' Doug posted in one of his quizzes...

[Vitesse2]

The Cycles referred to in the Paris-Vienna were light motorcycles (under 50kg) and in Braunbeck's are described as "Motorzweiraeder bis 50kg" as opposed to "Motocycles bis 250kg" in the next class - which I assume included tricycles and your quadricycles. The same weight limits were applied at (for example) the Exelberg hillclimb in May 1902.

As to the quadricycles, in the absence of any pictures, I'd guess they were essentially four-wheeled versions of tricycles, probably with seating only for the rider/driver.

[dbw]

often a "quadricycle" was a four wheeled vehicle that,if you can imagine, started as a typical bicycle...a rear axle was added across the rear frame lugs and then imagine a front axle where the front fork lugs would be...the driver would remain in the bicycle position on a cycle saddle..the passenger would sit in a chair central over the front axle.....the engine[sometime more than one and usually a single]] would reside in the typical motorcycle position[between the drivers legs] or behind and below the rear axle....the ones i remember are mostly french[dedion]english[enfield] but i'm sure the concept was widely followed.....[and yes, they raced them..as i'm sure they did anything with a motor ...]

[m.tanney]

Originally posted by Vitesse2
As to the quadricycles, in the absence of any pictures, I'd guess they were essentially four-wheeled versions of tricycles, probably with seating only for the rider/driver.

  That's what they were. I suppose we could think of them as early cyclecars. I believe that DeDion was one of the leading manufacturers of quadricycles. They were powered by a single cylinder "motette" engine. The DeDion machines did have a passenger seat - it was a rattan chair mounted over the front axle.
  I got a crash course in quadricycles earlier this year while working on something for the Canadian Motor Sport History Group. In Canada, the Massey-Harris Company used a copy of the DeDion motette to power its own quadricycles, which first appeared in 1899. The Massey-Harris machines were tube-framed, handlebar-steered vehicles. The motor was just in front of the rear axle. The driver sat above and in front of the motor. The only photos I've found of the Massey machine are of the version sold to the post office, which had no front seat. If there was a two-seater Massey quadricycle, it may have been the winner of what may have been Canada's first automobile race. There was a series of automobile races at the Toronto Exhibition in September of 1900. Races were planned for both quadricycles and larger vehicles. Contemporary press reports did not say which type of vehicle was used for the first race. Passengers were carried. If the first racewinner was a quadricycle, then they were quick enough for an 18 mph average over 10 laps of a half mile dirt track.
  In North America - and probably Europe - quadricycles were sometimes used for motor paced bicycle racing, an immensely popular sport at the turn of the century. There may have been quadricycle-only races on wooden bicycle tracks. Motorcycles were the most commonly used vehicles for motor paced bicycle races. I suspect that the first motorcycle races in North America may have been novelty events at bike races.

Mike

[Aanderson]

What puzzles me are the various classes or types of the participating vehicles.

I have an idea what a "Heavy Car/Grosse Voiture" or a "Light Car/Voiture Legère" or a "Voiturette/Vetturette" or even a "Cyclecar" was. Also I noticed that some of the races were not exclusively for cars but for motor cycles, too.

But on Darren Galpin's website you will find "Cycle", "Bicycle", "Tricycle" and - to top it all - "Quadricycle".

I can imagine that the difference between Bi-, Tri- and Quadricycles lies in the number of wheels. But then: Is a 4-wheel-cycle not in fact a car? What did a Quadricycle look like? And what seperated it from a proper car?

Is a "Cycle" identical to a two-wheeled "Motor Cycle"?

Eventually: At the 1902 Paris-Vienna race four "Bicycles" are listed (Bucquet and Labitte on Werner in 52nd resp. 58th place, Krieger and Podesenick on Laurin-Klement in 66th resp. 67th place). Is a "Bicycle" not in fact a two-wheeler without an engine?

Does it mean these four men were in fact bike-riders pedalling against motor cycles and cars over nearly 1000 kilometres for four days? This is where my imagination definitely ends. :

So many questions. Help! (And pictures, please!;)) [/B][/QUOTE]

I must confess that I'm not at all well-versed in the terminologies used by the French in the early days of the automobile, however, in the US, there wasn't truly a common name in use for self-propelled road-going vehicles for a number of years.

Henry Ford's famous "first car", built in 1895 has almost always been called the "Quadricycle" by not only historians, but also by Ford Motor Company and the Henry Ford Museum, where the car resides to this day (although, by some early accounts, Ford himself referred to it -- lightly, I assume -- as the "Popper", perhaps from it's single cylinder, un-muffled exhaust sound).

"Motor Carriage", "Horseless Carriage" , "Motor Car"and other more fanciful names seem to have circulated in the US for several years, before the French word "Automobile" came to be the one term in common use.

In the US at least, "Cyclecar" came into use, not only in common language, but also by manufacturers, of the very light small cars that had a brief fling of popularity in the years immediately prior to the US entering WW-I. These were cars approximately half the size of the light cars then in production, such as the Model T Ford (in fact, Ford Motor Company designed and tested a 1/2-sized Model T, with lightweight wire wheels approximately the same wheels as used on motorcycles of the day). Many of these cyclecars used motorcycle engines (or at least similar engines), belt drives, and light wire wheels. Cars such as the Imp Cyclecar, the Woods Mobilette, and the Scripps-Booth, the Greyhound, Red Bug, and Dumore all were of this type (also the Briggs & Stratton, and the Orient Buckboard, which were derivatives of the Red Bug) came and went in the years 1912-17.

Art Anderson

[Henk]

TRICYCLES

Articles and wood engravings in La Nature give a good impression of the many remarkable tricycles in France at the end of the 19th century.

It started earlier: a 1-hp omnibus in 1825……

(1) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.32/0196

Later, a horse might be replaced by a trolley tricycle…..

(2) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.52/0117

Or horsepower by manpower.……

(3) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...cgi?4KY28.52/80
(4) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.23/0239
(5) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.20/0364
(6) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.20/0365

With applications for photographers….

(7) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.25/0132

Care of the sick.....

(8) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.50/0132

Advertising.….

(9) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...gi?4KY28.44/068

Military…..

(10) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...gi?4KY28.57/376

Amphibic….

(11) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...gi?4KY28.41/068

See-going….

(12) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.21/0357

Then came steam….

(13) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.19/0148
(14) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.19/0165
(15) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.27/0280
(16) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.30/0129

Batteries……

(17) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.21/0393

And petrol….

(18) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...gi?4KY28.52/096
(19) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...gi?4KY28.48/021
(20) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...i?4KY28.46/0373

And with one more wheel, they became quadricycles….

(21) http://cnum.cnam.fr/...gi?4KY28.52/081

[dbw]

(21) cut 5 is what i always associated w/quadricycle....i think a few make the london-brighton...

[fines]

In 19th century Motor Racing, the competitors were usually divided into three main categories:

• "Voitures" (cars) - at least two seats side-by-side
• "Motor Cycles" - light vehicles with only one proper seat and an engine, mostly two- or three-wheeled, with or w/o pedals, handlebar steering, weight limit usually between 150 and 250 kg
• "Divers" - anything not coming under the previous two headings, thus: vehicles with only one proper seat, but too heavy for the motor cycle class

It will be obvious that there is a certain amount of fuzziness in these definitions! It appears that most people seemed to have an intuitive grasp of what a cycle constituted, as opposed to a proper car - and a "Voiturette" (which means, literally: very small car). Thus, a Voiturette wouldn't be considered as a "Voiture" (since it didn't have two seats side-by-side), but was also different from a "Cycle"!

A "Quadricycle" would be a "Cycle" with four wheels - whatever that means...

I can't be sure, but I have a feeling that the type of wheel was also of importance in the designation: "Cycles" usually had wire wheels, while most cars started out on artillery-type wooden wheels - except for the Peugeots, which almost exclusively had wire wheels, and hence were often called "Quadricycle" in the beginning...

Does that help, or confuse further?

[Hans Etzrodt]

Henk, thanks for your findings, which explains the original question. Very nice!