Addendum To Tampa Bay Automobile Museum

ADDENDUM TO THE TAMPA BAY AUTOMOBILE MUSEUM

I REALIZED AFTER I'D FINISHED POSTING THE 8-PART SERIES FROM MY TRIP TO THE CAR MUSEUM, THAT I'D FORGOTTEN A FEW OTHER NOTEWORTHY VEHICLES.

MILBURN ELECTRIC

1922

Lushly embroidered seats and that steering system sans wheel was awfully outmoded.

This is the 1922 Milburn.  It was an electric car and while way ahead of its time in the technology it seemed waaaaay behind the time in its overall design.  It looked like a throwback to the horseless carriage days.  In 1922 a lot of nice looking modern machines were being constructed, and this simply looked old fashioned.  It did, however, have a range of 100 miles and could go as fast as twenty miles an hour.  It was, perhaps too well built: it had a cost of three times the Ford Model T.

It boasted a kind of extended cab style seating, also embroidered. 

This was where all the batteries were stored.

Curtains?  

In the corner of the museum is where the Milburn's battery charger sits.  Keep in mind all of these cars are fully licensed and run on a regular basis.

Chrysler, my idea of a wild design company, never had door handles like these.

Here is the plug for the battery charger.  John my most valuable host was kind enough to flip it up for me.

Original tires for the Milburn.  If you weren't sure, these were non-skid.

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CITROEN HALF TRACK

1922

This was built in 1922 and in the picture below you can see that it housed seven separate radiators.  This was to insure the vehicle would keep going if others broke or were destroyed by any number of things.

The Citroen Half Track was a marriage between a truck and track system meant to deal with harsh lands.  There were three expeditions to show it off and it survived all three:  one across the Sahara, one traversing Africa from North to South, and the third from Lebanon and followed Marco Polo's Silk Road to Beijing. 

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The next attraction is something that I was not too interested in, simply because it is a reproduction.  I'm not into repro's; they are fake.  A New Salem rebuilt in the 1940's is a fake New Salem built in the 1940's.  But I include this simply to let you see an almost perfect reproduction of the first moving vehicle ever designed.    

FARDIER DE CUGNOT

1770

This is a steam powered military contraption that moved cannons for the French Army.  It operated with a ratchet system and while, slow, was made 100 years before real motor cars would begin to take form from various engineers and dreamers.  The original is in a museum in Paris.




Here it is in operation.