1906 Thomas Flyer 50HP Seven Passenger Touring Car

Ahead of Bonhams Two Generations Collection auction on 29 April, Andrew Frankel of the-intercooler.com gives an in-depth look at one of the highest performance American cars of its day—the 1906 Thomas Flyer 50HP Seven Passenger Touring Car.

It is true that the early history of the automobile is punctuated with stories of ‘what if’ and ‘if only’. For of the literally thousands of hopeful young companies that sprang up to try to exploit the opportunity provided by the newfangled ‘car’ (or motor car, autocar, or automobile as they were variously known back then), only a tiny percentage lived long enough to make good on the promise of their creators’ visions.

But over 110 years after its demise there is one that, far more than most, makes you wonder just how great it could have become. Because there was a time – cruelly short though it was – when it could be strongly argued that the E.R Thomas Motor Company could count itself among the finest auto constructors not just in the US, but the world. And when you think of Thomas cars, one other word is never far behind: ‘Flyer’.

Prior to entering the fledgling auto industry, and like so many others, Erwin Ross Thomas started out on the railroads before becoming a bicycle manufacturer. From here he progressed to stationary engines to motorcycles to small runabout cars called the Buffalo Junior and Buffalo Senior after their place of manufacture. But it was not until 1902 that the E.R Thomas Motor Company was created specifically for automobile construction.

Progress was rapid. His first model, the Thomas Model 16 was so sought after that, despite its single cylinder engine, by the end of 1903 there were Thomas agents not just in New York, but Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago too. The 1904 Thomas had three cylinders and was the first to be christened ‘Flyer’, while a year later a four cylinder car, the Model 25, was introduced with 40hp, five times the power of that offered by the Model 16 just two years previously. The company was flying, pun entirely intended. In just a couple of years Thomas had leapt from the swirling, roiling torrents of nondescript automotive start-ups, all desperate to be noticed, and transformed itself into one of the most respected car manufacturers on the continent.

Production of cars increased almost as rapidly as the power of the engines they contained. With 400 cars sold in 1904-05, by the end of 1906 it had built over 1000 cars of 40hp or more. Order books overflowed, amounting to over $5 million-worth of business. The following year the company diversified further, making taxis and fire engines then, in 1908, a standard car plucked from the factory three days before the start won the New York-Paris race, which remains to this day the only motor race to have circumnavigated the globe. It lastest 169 days. Buoyed by this success, Thomas made 1036 cars in 1909 and started making plans for a better than seven-fold increase in production. In those heady days, no one could have imagined the company was just three years from oblivion.

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What happened? It seems concerns about the reliability of a new six cylinder car introduced in 1908 did the company’s reputation no good at all, but the die was probably finally cast when ER Thomas decided in 1910 to sell his shares in the business and retire at the age of 60. Two years later the company went into receivership, and while it was sold and technically existed until 1919, the Thomas Flyers had been grounded for good.

Today any Flyer is an exceptionally rare and special sight, poignant too for the thoughts of what might have been that it evokes. There seems little question that the greatest cars it produced were those made in the halcyon days in the middle of the decade where the company seemed unable to put a foot wrong.

Drive a four cylinder Flyer from this era as I have been lucky to do, and what strikes you is the quality of its engineering, the essential rightness of its design and the fact it’s both far faster and more capable than you might think possible for a car that dates from the pioneering days of motoring. It’s hard to remember that it pre-dates even the Ford Model T, harder still to imagine what the average American would have thought when seeing one thunder past.

Because the company closed so long ago and with the name passing into near obscurity, Flyers today are almost mythically rare beasts; but even of those few that have survived for well over a century, the chance to acquire one such as that offered in our April 29 sale is perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity. Having spent over half its life with just two custodians, one of which being the famed Harrah collection of Reno, Nevada, it is offered in time capsule condition and is just one of two such 1906 cars still bearing its original coachwork. Further details are available here, but make no mistake: if you want to acquire one of the most original examples of one the finest early American automobiles ever created, this is an opportunity not to be missed.

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