Carroll, Iowa RPM Car Club

06/04/2026

June 4, 1896

Ford’s Quad

After over two years of experimentation, Ford’s first automobile achieves speeds of more than twenty miles per hour during his initial test drives. The Quadricycle features a two-speed transmission and a chain driven, ethanol powered engine. It has no brakes and cannot go in reverse.

Ford sells his first Quadricycle for $200. Two more are built, one in 1899 and another in 1901. Ford buys his first one back for $60; it is now displayed at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

06/02/2026

June 2, 1954

The Volvo Sports Car

Volvo debuts its first sports car prototype. The Volvo Sport P100car has racked plastic and a weak frame among other issues. It is under-engineered and performs poorly during internal tests. Only 68 P100s are manufactured and Volvo accidentally gives two of them the same VIN number.

Fifty of the Volvo sports car flops have been tracked; eighteen of them are still waiting to be found.

06/02/2026

June 2, 1899

The Locomobile Company of America is founded in Watertown, Massachusetts. Production is transferred to Bridgetown, Connecticut the following year. The company manufactures small steam cars until 1903 before switching to internal combustion-powered luxury automobiles.

The Locomobile Company is taken over by Durant Motors in 1922 and goes out of business in 1929.

06/01/2026

June 1, 1909

The Ocean to Ocean Endurance Race

A transcontinental race from New York to Seattle is held in conjunction with the 1909 Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYPE). The Ocean to Ocean Endurance Race is sponsored by Henry Ford and Robert Guggenheim, who also put up the prize money, $2,000 for first place and $1,500 for second place.

The race is run in two segments. The first leg is an endurance contest from New York City to St. Louis. During this portion, the drivers may only drive their vehicles in daylight and must obey the speed limits. On the second half, from St. Louis to Seattle, they can put the pedal to the metal, as there are fewer laws regarding automobiles west of the Mississippi River.

Driving the pictured stripped-down Model T, Bert Scott is declared the winner of the Ocean to Ocean Endurance Race, arriving in Seattle at 12:55 pm on June 23rd, covering the 4,106 miles in twenty-three days.

Five months later, however, it is learned that Scott cheated by switching engines halfway through the race. His trophy is revoked and the driver of a Shawmut, who had originally earned second place, is declared the winner.

05/31/2026

May 31, 1929

Ford in Russia

Believing the best way to undermine communism is to introduce capitalism, Henry Ford finalizes a deal authorizing the Ford Motor Company to manufacture automobiles in the Soviet Union.

The agreement, signed at the Ford headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan, authorizes Ford to oversee a production plant at the Gorky Automobile Plant in Nizhni Novgorodto, Russia, where it will produce the Model A. An assembly plant in Moscow is also to begin operations immediately and Ford will also send engineers and executives to the Soviet Union.

In return, the Soviets will buy 72,000 unassembled Ford vehicles, along with all the spare parts they would require for nine years, at a total cost of approximately $30 million.

The first Russian-assembled Fords leave the factory in 1932.

05/29/2026

May 29, 1946

The first Kaiser-Frazer automobile is produced, resulting from a partnership of industrialist Henry Kaiser and automobile executive Joseph Frazer. Frazer becomes President of the venture toward the end of World War II. He leaves the company in 1949, and is succeeded by Kaiser’s son, Edgar.

Kaiser-Frazer attains brief success after World War II, but goes defunct in 1953, merging with the Willys-Overland company.

05/26/2026

May 26, 1927

Ford Model T production ends. Over fifteen million such vehicles had been produced since 1908.

05/25/2026

May 25, 1994

Final Pit Stop

After his death at age seventy-one, the ashes of World War II Veteran George Swanson are, per his request, scattered in the driver’s seat of his prized 1984 white Corvette in Hempfield County, Pennsylvania. Swanson’s widow, Caroline, transports her husband’s ashes to the cemetery on the seat of her own 1993 Corvette. The ashes are on the driver’s seat as a crane lowers George's Corvette into a seven-by-seven-by-sixteen-foot hole. Caroline says “George always said he lived a fabulous life, and he went out in a fabulous style . . . “You have a lot of people saying they want to take it with them. He took it with him.”

The former Army Sergeant has planned his automobile burial in buying twelve plots at Brush Creek Cemetery, located twenty-five miles east of Pittsburgh, in order to ensure that his beloved Corvette will fit in his grave. After his death, however, the cemetery balks, amid concerns of vandalism and worries that other clients will be offended by the nature of the burial. They relent after weeks of negotiations, but insist that the burial be private, and that the car be drained of fluids to protect the environment.

05/22/2026