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Driving David D.'s Original Design.(Escape Roads)
Byline: JOHN F. KATZ
Fabled as the inventor of the porcelain bathtub, David Dunbar Buick abandoned plumbing in 1899 to build stationary and marine engines. His associates Walter Marr and Eugene Richard developed the first overhead-valve engine around 1903; and the first catalogued Buick automobile (curiously designated "Model B'') was sold in the summer of 1904. But what the Flint, Michigan, firm produced mostly were financial reorganizations-before William Crapo Durant bought the company that November and quickly transformed Buick from an asterisk to a rising star. With 8820 cars produced in 1908, Buick briefly rivaled Ford as the largest U.S. automaker.
Though assembled in 1909, the Buick Model F seen here is a clear linear descendant of that first Model B, powered by the same 2.6-liter, water-cooled opposed-twin rated at 22 hp at 1200 rpm and linked to a two-speed planetary gearbox driving the rear wheels via a single central chain. A Massachusetts collector began its restoration 20 years ago, after he found the car moldering in a chicken coop. Joe Conroy bought it in 2001 and had it completed at Pollock Auto Restorations in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
The long-stroke double-lunger lies transversely under the front seat, so it would normally be started with a crank inserted under the right (the driver's) side of the car. But Conroy's Buick has been thankfully retrofitted with an electric starter. A button on the front edge of the chair-high driver's seat brings the engine slowly to life with a syncopated wheeze-a-chick-a-wheeze-a-chicka-wheeze-a-chicka-chicka-chicka-chicka.
Driving an early Buick is an exercise in mechanical dyslexia. The longer and shorter levers on the right side of the steering wheel are the throttle and spark, respectively. The outboard of two levers to the driver's right releases the handbrake. So far, so normal. But then low gear engages as you push down on the middle pedal of three to the left of the steering column. The engine's rhythm ...
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