Was reading another car forum and a guy found a 1909 Simplo in an old lady's garage. She said her husband raced it. Been sitting a long time. Could not find much about it. Made two years in St Louis. Thats about it. Anybody ever hear of it ?
I'd never heard of Simplo, from Wikipedia... The Simplo was an American automobile manufactured from 1908 until 1909. A 10/12 hp twin-cylinder friction-drive runabout from St. Louis, it sold for $600 and featured a detachable mother-in-law seat.
... wonder if anyone "accidentally" left out the bolts... And for the record, YES, I DO get along well with mine!
Fur B When I lived in PA, I spent some time working for a restoration shop in Schwenksville. One of the cars we had in the shop was a Simplex. It ws a racing chassis with a 7 pass touring body on it and was reported to be owned by a Vanderbilt- he drove his family around in it during the week and raced with his friends on the weekends. The current owner wanted my boss to test the car to 100 mph... settled for 80. It was a gorgeous car- was at Hershey a few times.
Somewere I have a photo I took with a restored B Model MACK with three 50HP Simplex Toy Tonneaus on the back. This one was in the Harrah collection.
Ok so I really need a 10' long poster of that line up. Fill up the whole wall and just sit in my chair and stare at it. Any chance?
It would be great to see the roster to aid in figuring out what cars are in this line-up. Hard from this angle although I probably could figure out a couple. The easy one is the Jay Eye See (sixth fro the left). This was owned by the Case team and I also believe by the Sloan stable. Many thought it was Case based but the press pointed out it was Strang's old Fiat. Some thought it was a bit ugly although I kind of liked it. I would like to know the three cars on the right. Anyone have a roster? We had a Crane Simplex in the collection. Anything that was Simplex was pretty haughty stuff. I agree with FB, I am still reeling over the Mulford "find". These false alarms can be a bit of a tease, although not necessarily on purpose.-Jim
I am definately at fault for this one...it was the key word in his post that her husband "raced" it...no one "raced" a Simplo. So in my enthusiasm I interpolated it to be something completely different and got way off track. Sorry for the digresion and fore play. If you follow the link on the picture, you can read up on all the cars in it.
why I bother some times... http://www.fordmuscle.com/forums/garage/485342-next-door-find.html shame, for the shame. and the funniest shit of all, is that when ever some complete POS pops up, there is always some goober hot to say that "Jay Leno" would purchase it. You know, go talk to Jay, he has more money than sense, hell, he'll buy just about anything with wheels. Jay Leno is not Bill Harrah.
Boy I surely agree on the Jay Leno comment. I read it on here as well quite often and it is laughable. I was looking through his big dog garage site one day and ran across a 1912 Peerless he had bought (and now has sold) that I owned many moons ago. What he sold it for ($365,000 at RM last August at Pebble) is a far cry (appropriate term) what I got for it. As far a link, apparently my eyeballs are not working right as I am not seeing the link. -Jim
Thanks FB,-it is such a shame that more of these cars could not have been saved for us to enjoy-I guess the one surprise is this early appearance by Milton-Jim
actually she said the the old guy used it to go get parts when he was racing...a genuine racing car parts getter mobile...
Nope...Looks like there was 3 of them and one was used for parts for his when he was racing it (his )
FB, When I worked there, the Simplex had already been restored, but was back in with mechanical difficulties. Seems that every time the owner tried to get the car going (he had a real lead foot and wanted to race this car in every sense of the word), it would give him fits. I had the honor of tearing down the engine, but no one was happy when things came apart... The engine had been sent out to an expert to get it rebuilt, running, and tuned. the original crankcase was a mess, so my boss was able to find the bucks and have a new one cast out of aluminum alloy. The expert sent the jugs out to be honed, but neglected to tell the shop that the jugs needed to be honed at a slower rpm, so they got hot and wound up egg-shaped. As the pistons went through their stroke, there was total blow-by when they got to the middle of the jug. Also, the cams/chains were off, so nothing ran right. The pistons got knurled/jugs got rehoned and the cam timig got figured out- after that the car ran like a dream. I got to go for a ride before the car was buttoned up (no fenders, floorboards, etc)- 60+ on framland back roads... LOTS of fun!
I know the subject is Simplo, but here are a couple of pictures of my buddy Glenn's American Simplex racer that he restored/built. I painted the numbers and logo on it for him with milk paint. Glenn did the distressing. These were taken last year at the Old Car Festival at The Henry Ford/Greenfield Village.
The Jalopy Journal
