The Skene was an American
automobile
A car or automobile is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of ''cars'' say that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people instead of goods.
The year 1886 is regarded ...
manufactured from 1900 to 1901. A twin-cylinder 5-hp
steam car
A steam car is a car (automobile) propelled by a steam engine. A steam engine is an external combustion engine (ECE) in which the fuel is combusted outside of the engine, unlike an internal combustion engine (ICE) in which fuel is combusted in ...
, it was built in
Lewiston, Maine
Lewiston (; ; officially the City of Lewiston, Maine) is the second largest city in Maine and the most central city in Androscoggin County. The city lies halfway between Augusta, the state's capital, and Portland, the state's most populous cit ...
.
History
J. W. Skene Cycle Company of Lewiston finished its first steam carriage in 1900. R. H. B. Warburton of
Springfield, Massachusetts helped Skene organize, with a capital stock of $500,000, the Skene American Automobile Company. Company headquarters were in Springfield, the factory remained in Maine.
The Skene was a simple steam buggy with a 5-
hp double-acting two-cylinder engine and had a boiler with a working pressure of 160 pounds. The gasoline and water tanks were sufficient for a 25-mile run. All parts of the Skene were built in the Lewiston plant, a fact in which the Skene company took pride.
Prices ran from a Model 1 Steam Stanhope at $750 () to a Model 5 Canopy Steam Surrey at $1,300, .
By January of 1901, Skene had a production run of twenty cars, and Warburton arranged a large display at the
Philadelphia
Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...
Automobile Show that month. This didn’t work out as planned.
As The Motor Age magazine put it, "a miscalculation on the part of the railroad officials tied up four Skene machines somewhere between Springfield and Philadelphia, and a space big enough to comfortably exhibit half a dozen vehicles looked bare with but one."
Later in 1901, Skene reported 125 vehicles under construction but the partners’ money ran out. Sometime that spring the Skene American Automobile Company was attached for $5,000 by creditors. James Skene subsequently became a
Rambler dealer, and spent the rest of his life in the automobile business in Maine.
References
External links
Skene at the VirtualSteamCar Museum1900 Skene at the Seal Cove Auto Museum
{{Commons category, Skene vehicles
Defunct motor vehicle manufacturers of the United States
Defunct manufacturing companies based in Maine
Vehicle manufacturing companies established in 1900
Vehicle manufacturing companies disestablished in 1901
1901 establishments in Maine
1902 disestablishments in Maine
Steam cars
Veteran vehicles
Cars introduced in 1900
1900s cars