Video: 'America’s First Gasoline Powered Automobile: 1893, Duryea Brothers Motor Wagon, Oldest Photographs'

(Thursday, September 21, 1893) — A one-cylinder “Ladies Phaeton,” the first successful American-made, gasoline-operated motorcar, was taken for a short test drive today on the Howard Bemis farm in Chicopee, Massachusetts, near Springfield, by Frank Duryea, who had designed the vehicle with his brother, Charles.

The Duryea’s “motor wagon” was a used horse drawn buggy that the brothers had purchased for $70 and into which they had installed a 4 HP, single cylinder gasoline engine.

The car (buggy) had a friction transmission, spray carburetor and low tension ignition.