Very Rare Photo - Very Rare Car -The Biggest Dune Buggy Ever Seen on Cape Cod

By TRB

Albee Commercial Photograpers of Boston must have thought it was weird when they got a call back in the early 1900s to come to Cape Cod, Falmouth to be precise, to take a picture of a car. The car belonged to Fred Collins. It was a Simplex Speed Car. The photo they took that day is above. Fred is gone.

The Simplex Speed car, of which only 250 were made over five years, is the only car ever manufactured in New York City. It cost approximately $5,500 to own one of these, so there weren't many takers. It ran with a four cylinder engine - a massive one at 600 cubic inches - with a t-head. It could easily reach 50 mph. and was frequently used as a race car where it had a good record on the track. As you can see in the photo it a was a chain-driven car.

I got this photo-in-frame at an estate sale maybe ten years ago. I took it out of its walnut frame to photograph it. The front tire and the front fender have a small smudge on them, but it is otherwise restorable. This is the kind of cardboard-backed photo that you can clean with a just-barely-damp face cloth. (The photo is not for sale.) The notes with it, taken from one of his relatives, claim that Fred sometimes used this Simplex as a dune buggy.

Guess the times were simpler back then.