Red Bugs, Flyers and other Buckboards

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

In times of electrification and downsizing, it’s good to learn even that was a thing invented over a century ago. We only saw a tiny little but great fun-looking battery-operated two-seater called an ‘Auto Red Bug’ zoom past a couple of years ago. What was that? It turned out to be a wooden buckboard cyclecar, that’s also referred to as a flyer or motorette, which was produced from 1914 to about 1930.

Originally the thing was powered by a fifth wheel with an integral motor when it was marketed as the ‘Smiths Flyer’. Things looked promising in times of crisis and the project was soon taken over by Briggs and Stratton, which enhanced the fifth wheel’s engine giving it more power. Remarkably, perhaps, it was sold once more soon after though, now to The Automotive Electric Services which turned the Flyer into an electric vehicle, now driven by a Dodge-sourced electric starter motor. That’s how it was marketed and sold for a couple of years and that’s how we saw it for the first time. Ultimately it came with a 5hp Cushman engine and chain drive before it faded away – The Great Depression had just started…

A happier note is that the first Red Bugs were used by the Jekyll Island Club – a holiday resort for the rich - to buzz around on the island’s roads, paved with crushed oyster shells at 25mph max. The vehicles soon became a hit and were sold throughout the USA and even to Europe. From a 1928 ad for the electric version: “It operates on standard automobile storage batteries, rechargeable in your garage or at any service station.”

Now - you don’t come across these flyers all too often, so now that RM Sothebys is selling three of them in different guises – an original 1916 variant with the Smith-version of the fifth wheel, a 1919 version with Briggs & Stratton motor and a 1924 electric variant - we thought we’d show them to you here. We’ve also included two even earlier incarnations in the shape of a 1903 and 1904 Orient Motor Buckboard. Mind you – you’ll be an innovator and a show stopper at the local Concours in any of these!

Words by Jeroen Booij. Pictures courtesy RM Sothebys.

Ajoutez un commentaire...