External Combustion from Stanley to Doble: Whatever Happened to the Steam Car?

It's hard to look a the car above and the one below and realize that they both came from the same generation, let alone the first half of the first decade of the then-new 20th century. Above is a Locomobile Runabout from 1900; below is the steam-propelled speed record car produced by twin brothers F.E. and F.O. Stanley just three years later...

In France, Bollée had produced a viable steam carriage in 1873, and his twin-engine coach carried a dozen passengers from Le Mans to Paris 2 years later. That trip took 18 hours. His vehicle was followed by the better-known De Dion-Bouton steam-powered automobile in 1883, with Ransom E. Olds (later of Oldsmobile and Reo fame) following in 1886, Peugeot in 1889, and the Stanley Brothers in 1897. They built around 200 cars over 1898-99, making them the leading manufacturer of cars for a short while, and sold a license for this early design to Locomobile, who aimed at simplicity and affordability before switching to gasoline-powered luxury cars in 1903, the same year as the Stanley racer pictured above. The Stanley racer, with its flat-bottomed teardrop bodywork and flush wheel covers, peers deeply into the 20th century, while the spindly Locomobile, a visual embodiment of the phrase "horseless carriage", looks back at the 19th. In 1902 the Stanley brothers incorporated the Stanley Motor Carriage Company and worked on improving their power plant.  One advantage of steam engines was their torque and power; by 1906 the Stanleys had built the Rocket shown below, and their chief mechanic Fred Marriot set the land speed record in January of that year by covering a mile in 28.2 seconds.  That's 127.6 miles per hour... 

The Rocket, unlike the polished alloy teardrop 1903 car, was built of fabric stretched over lightweight framing, like early aircraft, and weighed just 1,600 pounds.  Marriot lost an eye when the car flipped during another record attempt in 1907; he then retired from racing. During that year, one of Stanley's competitors, White Motors, built the steam-powered tourer shown below. It's parked in front of a 1964 Chrysler Turbine Car*, a much later challenger to the gasoline-fueled internal combustion engine. 

In the first decade of the new century, steam cars were speedier than either internal combustion powered cars or electrics, and smoother than their noisy internal combustion competition. Unlike with early internal combustion engines, steam car owners didn't need the inconvenient and hazardous hand crank to get started; they just lit the pilot on the gasoline or kerosene-fueled steam generator and waited for pressure to build. That was one reason steam-powered cars and electrics outsold gasoline powered cars until the electric starter was invented. 

External combustion engines were not as fuel-efficient as internal combustion ones, however, and there was the added inconvenience of waiting 20 minutes or more to produce enough steam pressure to drive away once you fired up the boiler.  Also, early steam cars like the 1908 Stanley Model K Runabout above and the 1912 model below, might need to stop to refill the water tank every 20 to 50 miles or so. As this was still the era of horse-powered agriculture and horse-drawn carriages, the place to stop was often the watering trough used by friendly, reliable horses...

By the time the 1923 Stanley touring car below was built, the steam car and the electrics had been eclipsed in the market place by internal-combustion engines. The Stanley brothers had sold their car company in 1917, and Francis Stanley died the following year.  Freelan (F.O.) Stanley went on to found the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado.  Estimated total production of Stanley automobiles was over 10,000 units. 

The same year the Stanley twins sold their car company and the United Stated entered World War One, the four Doble brothers, led by engineer Abner Doble, introduced a new kind of steam car at the New York Motor Show. This was the Doble Detroit, also known as the Model C.  Among its innovations was a key-starting system that fired up the kerosene-fueled steam generator without needing to light a pilot, using a a single spark plug.  More impressive is that the new steam generator design allowed the car to move off only 90 seconds after turning the key.  An electric fan forced air into this flash boiler to allow rapid heating.  A steam condenser greatly increased the distance between water refills.  These ideas were refined in the handful of Model D cars built to Doble's design, and then refined still further in his Model E. Common to all was the absence of a transmission.  There was no need to shift; like electric motors, the compact steam engine with its four compound cylinders mounted ahead of the rear axle developed so much torque from a standing start that gears weren't needed. There was no accelerator pedal either; the hand throttle was located at the steering wheel....

The author was happy to find this Doble Model E at the Pebble Beach Concours in 1997. It was only the 2nd Doble he'd seen, and the reason is that Dobles were always scarce.  Most sources say that Doble made only two dozen of their masterwork Model E.  

That's not a radiator at the front of the Model E; it's the condenser, located in front of the steam generator. Doble advertised that the car might go as far as 1,200 miles between water refills, but Jay Leno, the owner of two Dobles including the 1925 Murphy-bodied rumble-seat roadster below, says 200 miles is more realistic. Still, that's 4 times as far as the best Stanley.  And the car was eerily silent in operation, easily capable of keeping up with today's cars under highway conditions. 

Why didn't the Doble succeed?  One reason was that the cars were expensive; the original price of the 1925 Model roadster pictured was $25,000.  The cars were heavy, complex, and required frequent maintenance to perform well. The company required frequent financial maintenance too, and Abner Doble was accused of stock manipulation, as Preston Tucker would be in his efforts to start a new car company two decades later.  Perhaps the most persistent problem was that Doble was a perfectionist; he kept fiddling with engineering details, so that even within a given model series like the D or E, specifications varied from car to car.  The final round of refinements led to the rare Model F, but the Depression closed down the Doble adventure in 1931.

How many cars did Doble manage to make? Counting the first 3 prototypes, the last of which was the Model B, the Model C (also called Doble Detroit, no fewer than 11 built, but likely not many more), the 5 Model Ds that preceded the E, and the 7 Model F's built before Doble folded in 1931, we come up with at least 50. Even compared with other expensive cars of the era like Duesenberg, it's a small fraction of what should have been possible. It's apparent that Abner Doble was better at engineering innovation than manufacturing or marketing. His story is perhaps another chapter in our informal series on how to lose money by going into car building, but the surviving Doble steamers are instructive examples in how to solve problems with engineering.

*Footnote:  Posts in our archives review the history of the Chrysler Turbine Car, and of jet-powered cars in general.

Photo Credits:

Top:  museonicolis.com

2nd & 3rd:  New England Historical Society

4th thru 7th:  wikimedia
8th:  youtube.com, sourced from Jay Leno's Garage

9th: Nancy Collins

10th &11th:  youtube.com

12th:  youtube.com

Bottom: aaca.org