From Owego, New York, circa 1914, came this very functional cyclecar

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Feature Article from Hemmings Classic Car

March, 2010 - Jim Donnelly

A lot of issues need to be considered when you discuss a car like the one we're about to profile. The first, and most important, is peripherally linked to the year it was built, 1914. Analogous to gelatin being poured into a mold, the definition of "car" had yet to solidify into something immediately recognizable. Most people still considered it a platform on steel wheels pulled on rails behind a steam locomotive.

It was still very unclear in 1914 whether personal transportation for the ordinary American working stiff, who would have considered himself nouveau riche if he pulled in a consistent $40 a week, would really exist anytime soon. Private automobiles were for those who actually were rich, in many cases. The real coming market in affordable transport, in the belief of some promoters, would be in motorcycles.

Future decades would prove time after time that the masses only rushed to jump aboard two-wheelers when the only other alternative was public transport. Given the choice, four wheels and a body have been the clear preference. In the early years, still, more than a few entrepreneurs were hedging their bets, and envisioned that the truly cheap automobile would have deep roots in motorcycling. The idea was to keep these cars' purchase price to the absolute minimum. Henry Ford had already introduced his Model T when the faddist promotion of these tiny cyclecars, as they're still called, began around 1910, but it was still years from industry dominance.

As with many automotive innovations, the cyclecar is primarily a European creation. Léon Bollée built a three-wheeled, three-place car in 1895, followed three years later by the first Renault-built voiturette, although both claimed automobile, not motorcycle, origins. If you took a poll of the people who track their history, most would probably agree that the first market-viable cyclecar, and the template for its typical design, was the Bedelia, first built in 1910 by Bourbeau et Devaux of Paris. Like a cycle, it accommodated two passengers sitting fore and aft - the rear passenger worked the cable-operated steering. Seated forward, the passenger operated a lever that adjusted the drive belt's tension, effectively moving the Bedelia's final-drive ratio up or down as needed. There was no conventional transmission or differential. A single-cylinder, 10hp cycle engine was the initial power choice.

It was really easy to produce a cyclecar, so long as the builder had ready access to an engine supplier. Perhaps five dozen companies produced the cars in Europe, Canada and the United States. Some very famous names have at least peripheral association with cyclecars. In Europe, those brands included Amilcar of France and in England, the fabled Morgan and the short-lived Jappic, both of which used the esteemed J.A.P. motorcycle engines of John A. Prestwich for motive power. Stateside, the Car-Nation was assembled in Detroit alongside the full-size Keeton, and used unusually complex four-cylinder power with a geared transmission. The Dudly Bug, spun off the eponymous toolmaker in Menominee, Michigan, had staggered seating and pulley drive. The uncommonly handsome lineup of Scripps-Booth cars included the Rocket, a tandem-seat roadster whose missile-like nose appendage was actually its fuel tank. It used a planetary transmission and belt drive in conjunction with a Spacke V-twin engine.

For reasons we'll enumerate shortly, none of the cyclecars, at least the American ones, lasted very long. As noted already, the car's construct in the common mind was continuing to evolve, and during World War I, it was distinctly separating from that of the motorcycle. The cyclecar's resulting rapid fadeaway caught a lot of its promoters in bad positions of capitalization and sales strategizing, through probably not totally unaware of what was taking place around them. Among those felled by changing tastes was the O-We-Go Car Company in upstate New York, which built an estimated 300 cyclecars during its single full year of operation, 1914, including this one. It's believed to be the only existing O-We-Go in the world that's completely functional and roadworthy.

On a number of levels, the O-We-Go story, both involving the company and this surviving car, is founded on hometown history and pride. The O-We-Go's father could justly be identified as Charles B. Hatfield Jr., who first entered the automobile business with his father in Cortland, New York, about 1906. A year later, the company moved to Miamisburg, Ohio, where it built a two-cylinder high-wheeler with solid tires variously known as the Buggyabout and the Unique. Some components, including the bodies, were supplied by the Kauffman Buggy Company, also in Miamisburg. Both firms merged after skidding into receivership, and the car, now known as the Clark-Hatfield, was then briefly built in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Interestingly, the future O-We-Go Hatfield family is no relation to the Hatfields that once operated the Cortland Wagon Company, and later relocated to nearby Sidney, New York, where they built the Hatfield car between 1916 and 1924.

A lineup of investors then began building trucks in 1910 under the Hatfield name. The earliest Hatfield trucks were variations on the previous Ohio high-wheelers, still with chain drive. The bankrollers briefly moved the company to Cornwall-on-the-Hudson, New York, before relocating it farther upstate again, to Elmira. The truck company bumped to a halt following its 1913 production run, and for whatever reason - mostly likely, another round on investors, including a onetime Standard Oil financier, who scratched up $150,000 in new money - the younger Hatfield decided to get into cyclecars. He figured on doing it a little east of Elmira, in the small industrial city of Owego, New York, along the Susquehanna River in Tioga County.

Here come some more of those issues. In 1914, Owego was home to the Ives Motorcycle Corporation, whose founder, Willis H. Ives, had been involved in the manufacture of several local cycles. The earliest was the Reliance, beginning in 1903, which then became the Empire Motor Cycle Company in nearby Addison from 1903 to 1906. Ives moved then east to Elmira Heights in 1907 and then to Owego in 1908. Following a 1911 bankruptcy, Ives bought what was left of Ives with new investors and named the company for himself. Ives was already supplying engines to another cyclecar, the Imp, which was built in Auburn, Indiana. The Imp's enduring claim to fame is its design by William B. Stout, an itinerant genius who had previously been an engineer at Scripps-Booth before going on to create the Ford Tri-Motor airplane and later, the Stout Scarab, which some consider the very first minivan. Before all that, though, Imp went bust, which meant that Ives suddenly had considerable manufacturing capacity to let. In stepped Hatfield and his new money. For a while, the jauntily named O-We-Go (in the indigenous Iroquois, ah-wa-gha roughly means "where the valley widens") was rolling. Briefly.

Through 1912, Ives branded his motorcycles, and their engines, Reliance. He then changed the brand to Monarch, the type of engine now installed in this O-We-Go. Its owner, Jim Mead, a native Owegoan, owned two of the last three NOS Monarch V-twin engines in existence when he started looking for a car.

"As a young enthusiast growing up in Owego, I'd known that a car had been built here," Jim explained. "As a teenager, I talked to guys around town who were in their 60s and 70s who knew about the car, but nobody could ever find one." That was until a friend who studied the Hatfield family's adventures in transportation was riffing though a Horseless Carriage Club roster and discovered that Audy Harrison, residing in Utah, owned a 1914 O-We-Go. Jim's friend knew he had the Monarch engines and put them in touch. A deal was struck. As Jim recalled it, "It was missing the engine, axles and steering column, but we got the change-gear mechanism, body and suspension. I was determined to retain the original O-We-Go body."

Jim is fully in synch with the yesterdays of steel and coal, though not to the point of blind obsession. Yes, his family spread includes a line-side Lehigh Valley railroad passenger station built in 1902, but a DOHC Alfa Romeo engine from a 1960 Giulietta Spider hangs by a chain from the rafters. The ingenuities involved in reviving the O-We-Go were, in his estimation, an exercise where planning paid off. Not every needed part was going to be directly sourced to the original manufacturer. An example is the steering column, which had to be in three concentric elements and capable of mounting the gear-changing linkage. A buddy of his in the Hudson Valley of New York located one. It's not an O-We-Go part but probably came from some other pre-1920 cyclecar. The drive wheels, perhaps the most critical missing element, incorporate sheaves for the drive belt. Another connection, this one in Oregon, furnished them, sourced from Imp, the erstwhile Ives partner.

All that made it possible for the O-We-Go to go, which, despite its apparent simplicity, is a little more challenging than it looks. The biggest obstacle may be its tininess and obvious fragility, akin to a tin washtub with perambulator wheels. Get in, and you'll involuntarily start looking around for the soap dish. Once squeezed in, you look up at an SUV or minivan like it's a supertanker's hull. Before you get in, you've got to crank-start it, which is surprisingly easy, probably due to a remarkably effective Harley-Davidson "wasted spark" igniter that fires the plugs on both the ignition and exhaust strokes. From there, it's a matter of doing the levering that changes the positions of the two friction wheels that make up the driveline.

"Either the driving wheels are in contact with the engine, or they're not," he explained. "When you put it in gear, so to speak, you're forcing the two friction wheels together. I guess the best way to describe it is that it's kind of like operating a Snapper lawnmower. Driving the car is counterintuitive, because you actually have to push on the clutch or gear pedal to make the car go. There's a ratchet on the pedal that forces the discs, which incorporate the driving plate, together to make the car move."

It's an imprecise mode of locomotion, especially to the 99 percent of car people who are accustomed to hardened, toothed helical gears in their vehicles' drivelines. By Jim's acknowledgement, it doesn't always work perfectly, only enough so to let the car be driven maybe three miles at a pop to a nearby village, and then only a few times a year, maxing out at maybe 25 MPH. Yet it's astounding, an actual running cyclecar, and the last gasp for O-We-Go, which built maybe 300 cars and kits in its final year. By 1914, Ford (and others) were selling real cars for so little money that the cyclecars were finished before Prohibition became law.

"It was just serendipitous, being able to restore this one," Jim said. "It's from my hometown, it actually runs, and it doesn't do so too badly, either."

Absolutely one of one
Amazingly comfortable ride
You're one (two?) with the road

"Putt. Putt. Cough. Putt."
No protection from anything
A Ford Focus looms above you

Owner's View
"Really, the term I like to keep using is 'serendipity." The O-We-Go was well known locally, and in the hobby, but nobody had ever seen one. To restore one, and get to drive it, is delightful, exciting and rewarding. I had a lot of help, starting with George Staley from the Northeast Classic Car Museum in Norwich, New York.

"The most exciting thing is that now, I've finally driven the ghost. For so long, this car was just a phantom. Being able to finally drive an O-We-Go is a thrill." - Jim Mead

Club Scene

Horseless Carriage Club of America
5709 Oak Avenue
Temple City, California 91780-2431
Dues: $45/year; Membership: 4,000

Base price: $385

Type: Monarch F-head four-stroke V-twin, cast-iron cylinders, cast-aluminum crankcase, air cooled
Displacement: 54.3 cubic inches
Bore x Stroke: 3.375 x 3.750 inches
Compression ratio: 6.0:1
Horsepower @ RPM: 10 @ N/A
Torque @ RPM: N/A
Valvetrain: Mechanical, exhaust valves above crankcase
Main bearings: 2
Fuel system: Single float-feed Schleber Model H carburetor with dashboard choke adjustment
Lubrication system: Splash with pressurized drip make-up
Electrical system: 6-volt battery with Harley-Davidson breaker-point timer and coil
Exhaust system: Dual exhaust ports

Type: Friction, plate and flywheel, dual drive V-belts final drive
Type: V-belt with sheaved rear wheels
Ratio: Variable, 1.0:1 to 3.3:1

Type: Non-reversible worm and gear, manual
Ratio: N/A

Type: Mechanical, manual
Front: None
Rear: Hodaka 6.0-inch expanding drum

Type: Sheet steel body on ash frame with steel front subframe
Body style: Two-passenger tandem roadster
Layout: Front engine, rear-wheel drive

Front: 1.5-inch tubular steel axle, ball-bearing spindles, full-cantilever leaf springs
Rear: 1.5-inch tubular steel axle, full-cantilever leaf springs

Wheels: Steel clincher rims, wire spokes
Front and rear: 28 x 2.5 inches
Tires: Coker Tire clincher
Front and rear: 28 x 2.5 inches

Wheelbase: 104 inches
Overall length: 132 inches
Overall width: 44 inches
Overall height: 45 inches
Front track: 36 inches
Rear track: 36 inches
Shipping weight: 600 pounds

Crankcase: 1 pint
Cooling system: N/A
Fuel tank: 4 gallons

Bhp per CID: 0.18
Weight per bhp: 60 pounds
Weight per CID: 11.05 pounds

0-60 MPH: N/A
¼-mile ET: N/A
Top speed 58 MPH: (est.)

Total: 1914 O-We-Go 300 (est., built and kits)


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