From the Stanley Motor Carriage Company, operating from 1902 to 1924. They went bust after their steam cars couldn’t compete with advancing internal combustion engine technology. A key development in their the demise was the electric starter, which eliminated the risk of injury from a crank start.
Photo of a 1908 car, same vintage as the ad, but this model has a covered top to keep out the rain and sun.
Six horsepower engine from a Stanley Steamer,
And the steam generator from a 1919 model,
Stanley Streamer gets your home cleaner!
Damn catchy jingles.
Steam engines are very cool, but not very efficient. Supposedly the reason that trains, in the Americas at least, switched to diesel was because the fuel was more energy dense. 1000 miles worth of diesel was more expensive than 1000 miles worth of water and coal, but the water and coal refueling stations need to be staged more frequently and cost more in infrastructure and labor to keep supplied.
Steam locomotives are also fragile and don’t have that much power compared to diesel and then diesel-electric. In Europe coal that locomotives could use was also very expensive so at the end of the steam era they had quite a few machines converted to burn heavy liquid fuels in the boiler.
(And steam has a lot of drawbacks like needing to keep the fire going, having to wait for pressure to build up… you can just start a diesel locomotive and start pulling a train quickly, so it requires a lot less labour)
but not very efficient
According to the ad, between 9.6 and 11.5mpg. (Just for the gasoline. Not counting the water needing to be refilled.)
Yeah, not very efficient… But, honestly, better than I was expecting for a vintage steam-powered car.
You stream cars are always water limited. Water is heavy!
But water is (usually) easier to find and refill than gas, especially in those early days.
I like the older cleaveland steamer model