Matters arising

You may remember, a month ago I introduced you to Thomas Hyler-White and his project cars for the English Mechanic magazine. In the intervening time, a couple of things have come to light to add a bit more to the story.
Firstly, I said that only two models of the first project car survived. The one in a Bonhams auction that started my quest for more information, and another unknown one.
Well,  I am happy to report that the unknown one is now known. I found a picture on an Australian car enthusiast's Flickr page. It was built in 1999 using an original crankshaft and flywheel. Everything else was made by hand, including the crankcase.
The Veteran Car club, THE authority on veteran and vintage cars around the world, have certified it as a 1902. Because even though the age of the contemporary parts and the original construction articles were faithfully followed, there were several improvements to the original design detailed in the letters pages of the EM that this new construction has incorporated. The car currently resides in the McFeeters Car Museum, in Forbes, NSW, Australia, and makes regular visits to car shows. You can find another picture of the car on the museums Facebook page.

English Mechanic No.2 (image courtesy of Classic Cars Australia)

The second thing I discovered comes from the pages of the American Magazine, "The Horseless Age".
I have remarked in earlier posts, that there seems to have been an informal link between the two magazines in that they would share articles, photographs, and drawings.
The drawings of Hyler White projects were one of the things shared between the two publications. However in the editorial introduction to this project they were non too complimentary in what they had to say.
"It might appear from the wording of the articles that the vehicle is intended to be built by amateurs and others from the drawings with which the article are illustrated. We do not believe that efficient vehicles of this class can be built by amateurs”.
Which is a bit of a surprise when you look through the pages of The English Mechanic magazine and see all the glowing reports on projects built to, or inspired by, Hyler-Whites articles.
As the Horseless Age is a trade magazine, and this is still the early days of the automobile. The proprietors of the magazine have no idea if the automobile was here to stay or not, or if even the mass produced automobile would play second fiddle to home built personal projects. Maybe they were just protecting their interests, putting you off building your own car.
They go on to suggest that the engine probably lacks power, and that the transmission is less than effective for American uses. Even though in Europe vehicles of this kind have competed thousands of miles, as they freely acknowledge. So they really don't appear to be in favour of this undertaking.  They invite criticisms from their readers and close the editorial by almost apologetically telling their audience that the series of articles may take some time to finish.
But the story of the construction of the second English Mechanic car gives me hope. Perhaps somewhere in an old barn here on the Minnesota Prairie, is an early 1900's 4hp engine sitting unloved and ignored. I could find it, restore it and bring it back to life. Then build a car around it using the plans and articles in the magazine. To begin such a project next year, the centenary of the passing of Thomas Hyler-White the designer, You have to admit there's a certain air of nostalgic romanticism there.
It almost certainly won't happen and I'll end up using my model making skills to build a scale model of the car instead. But we can all dream can't we?

The History of the Doctors Coupe

My 1926 Doctors Coupe

By now, most of you are familiar with my Model T. A 1926 “Doctors Coupe”. But just what is a Doctors Coupe? It’s something I wanted to investigate further.
There's many a Model T Ford owner who will swear that the Doctors Coupe is a type of Model T, that it was a specific type of T made specially for physicians. There are just as many that will say that there’s no such thing as a Doctors Coupe and it's just a clever piece of marketing. On the Model T forums on the internet it’s one of those “hot button” topics along with “what motor oil should I use?” and “what’s the best material for transmission bands?”.
I have even seen one person state with the greatest authority that the term Doctors Coupe was coined by Cadillac in 1906, with their first enclosed car, the model M. At the end of this post I shall present evidence to the contrary.
What exactly is a coupe? The word coupé comes from the French verb to cut, “couper”. (KOO-PAY is the correct pronunciation. KOOP being an Americanization)
This new type of carriage appeared a the end of the 17th Century. It was created by cutting off the front of a Berlin or (Berline) coach, thus removing the rear facing seats. This created a small, lightweight private coach, suitable for when the women of the time wanted to go out shopping. It was known as the Berline-coupé. Which quickly was shortened to coupé.
Where Doctors came into it, I do not know. Doctors are recorded using coupes in the days of the horse drawn vehicle for the term to carry over. But there is as much evidence that doctors used horses and buggies as well. Reviewing an 1893 issue of "The Hub" magazine. A publication specifically for the coach building tradesman, has adverts suggesting that a Phaeton, a sporty lightweight carriage was a suitable conveyance for a physician.

"The Hub" in 1893 carried an advertisement for a Doctors Phaeton.

I even found a court record from the early 1900's where a witnesses statement used three different descriptions for the same vehicle in the same sentence!

Buggy, Brougham, or Coupe? In this court record a witness isn't sure.

Many car manufacturers claim to have a Doctors Coupe in their range: Ford, Talbot, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Hudson for starters.  There was clearly a concerted effort among car manufacturers to get doctors to purchase one of their automobiles, and they probably thought that a small, lightweight vehicle such as a coupe would be suitable for their uses.
Doctors are respected members of the community and if one were to be seen in a particular vehicle. That could be good publicity for the marque. In fact, the publishers of The Horseless Age magazine printed a  “Business Automobiles"  special issue of their magazine in 1901 with extensive coverage of vehicles for Doctors.

An advertisement for a Business Automobiles special about vehicles for Doctors.

The magazine contains many lengthy, erudite articles comparing experiences, requirements and discussions of the advantages of steam over electric and gasoline and vice versa. These doctors wrote pieces in great detail about their vehicles. They wrote about the amount of miles they covered in their various vehicles; between 6000 and 8000 miles a year was commonplace. One physician claimed to have run 11,972 miles around the streets of Philadelphia in his vehicle. But at no point did any of them ever mention that they had a coupe bodied automobile. They never even mentioned the makes of vehicle they had.
There is also an article in "The Hospital" magazine an English publication from 1906, less detailed than the one in the Horseless Age, that treated the reader as someone who didn't know anything at all about the new method of transport called the automobile. In that piece, three vehicle styles were recommended as suitable for the profession; the Runabout, the Brougham, and the Landaulette. Amusingly, the article also recommends that the physician should consider a coachman/chauffeur, which is probably why the Brougham and Landaulette were recommended. Landaulette is a term that has passed into obscurity now, but in the early days of the automobile, it was a larger version of the Brougham where the passengers sat in a covered or convertible section and the driver sat in the open.
Then I came across something that really grabbed my attention. The story of the first physician in the USA to use a vehicle in his practice.
That was Doctor Carlos Booth, of Youngstown Ohio. In 1895 he designed his own vehicle, and had it made by the Freedonia Carriage and Manufacturing company of Youngstown, using a Pierce Crouch engine for power.
Dr. Booth called the vehicle "The Cab" though people who saw it called it the “Milk wagon”. Capable of a top speed of 18mph it could climb a 12% grade at 4mph. Impressed with his own creation he called it "the most serviceable motor wagon as has yet been produced." He even entered it in a motor race in New York, but it broke down half way around. Two photographs of the good doctors "cab" have come to light. One with an enclosed cab and the other open topped.

Doctor Booth's "cab"

This second view of Doctor Booths Cab shows it in an open topped form.

He carried on using it for about 18 months. But as there were so few other automobiles on the road he was always scaring the horses and would often have to stop and lead horses past the "monster". Because of the inconvenience of stopping every few miles to calm down the equine population he went back to a conventional horse and buggy. That was until the amount of automobiles on the road increased to be less daunting to horses, so he went back to automobiles. First, a Thomas Flyer and later, a Hupmobile. But no mention of anything being a coupe. So where does that leave us? The first doctor to use a automobile didn't even use a coupe.
The first mention I have found for a Doctors Coupe is in this advert from The Horseless Age in January 1900 for a DeDion-Bouton. It looks like a Model Y DeDion. But in a previous magazine advert the vehicle was described a “Doctors Brougham”.

So far, the earliest reference I have found to the Doctors Coupe
A DeDion-Bouton in "The Horseless Age" 1900.

Yet a month earlier, the same vehicle was described as a Doctor's Brougham

I'm not sure why the vehicle was termed a Brougham one month and a Coupe the next. With a driver inside the vehicle it doesn't fit the definition of a Brougham. It looks like they considered the term interchangeable.
Were DeDion the first to coin the term in relation to the automobile? I have yet to find anything earlier, and I would welcome any documented proof of earlier automotive use of the term.