Last week I attended the Gooding and Company auction at Pebble Beach California. 133 antique and classic cars were sold at this auction for a total of 60 million dollars.
One of the cars was a very very old steam car, a 1884 De Dion, Bouton Et Trepardoux Dos-A-Dos. It was made in Paris. It is claimed to be the oldest operating automobile in the world. It sold for 3.2 million plus the 10% premium that goes to the auction company. I heard the auctioneer say it went to a museum in Texas.
I was able to spend a few hours looking over the car during the auction preview time earlier in the day. I had a lot of fun tracing out the various systems trying to figure out how the car worked. I took many pictures. I may have lost my pictures as I am getting an error message from the memory card in my digital camera.
Gooding and Company has a video clip of this car running on their website: [goodingco.com].
Beamersteamer

Can annyone find the pic of A. De Dion taken w/his young chaffeur[now in his 80s]in 1941,,,,driving in Paris,at the start of the war,during the German occupation,,Chauffur name was Zu Lele I think,,,in his employ since the steamer was new,,,musta been a sight,,,Is this the one that was at the Anderson museum in Boston [Brookline] several years ago ?? Cheers Ben

I rode w/Joe Knowles on the R.Dudgeon 1866 steam wagon a few years back,Joe drove I was fireman,,steam at 65--85 psi,,that one was the 2nd built by Dudgeon ,in Philadelphia,,,The first one was destroyed in the Crystal Palace fire 1850 something,,,Cheers Ben