Doble – the Tesla of before the War?

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In the ongoing discussion about which technicalities are going to bring motor cars into our future, the steam car brings up some interesting facts. And although it seems unlikely that steam cars will show us the way ahead, it is nice to take a little look at them here never the less. We’ve all heard of Stanleys and Locomobiles, but Doble of Detroit may just be a little less known. So here’s a bit more about them.

The cars of the Doble brothers were definitely interesting. The boys started working on an old White steam engine when they were still in school. Somehow they must have loved this piece of engineering and they continued improving it in a car of their own make, coming up with an engine of their own also. This definitely was a clever piece, with some innovative inventions – including a long-lasting water-condensing system and anti-rust boiler. The 1914 prototype was remarkably fast, too. It managed to break the 0-60mph barrier in 15 seconds!

Further developments they came up with included a boiler system, which used atomized kerosene, ignited with a spark plug, which then rapidly heated the water inside coiled steel tubing. This change allowed the new Doble-Detroit to be ready to drive in as little as 90 seconds after ignition. After attending the New York Motor Show of 1917, Doble presumably received 5,390 deposits for his Model C cars, scheduled for delivery in early 1918. But from then on things go horribly wrong. The first production cars turn out to be not so fast as predicted and have lots of teething troubles. Besides, the brothers aren’t very happy with each other anymore. The company implodes and is only revived a couple of years later when one of the brothers all of a sudden dies and the remaining three work things out. They come up with the Model E in 1924 which is able to sprint from 0 to 75mph in some 10 seconds – surely the Tesla Model S of its day? It was very expensive, though, and only sold to the happy few. Money issues led to more problems, though, and after less than 50 were sold the company went out of business once more in 1931.

A real shame as the car that the Dobles made certainly was innovative and clever, certainly making it an interesting case of what could have been..?

Words by Jeroen Booij. Picture damninteresting.com.

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