Auction Catalog - Auctions America

A1899 De Dion-BoutonThree-WheelerThis is THE ancestor, the motorcycle equivalent of Lucy on the African plains. Ninety-five percent of all motorcycles ever built are powered by direct descendants of the powerplantof this turn-of-the-century antique from France.AA5ACount de Dion financed engineers Bouton and Trépardoux, who developed three-and four-wheeled vehicles propelled by an internal combustion engines. The De Dion was the first reliablegas powered motor vehicle on the market, and its popularity made the De Dion company the largest automobile manufacturer in the world at the dawn of the Twentieth Century.The De Dion-Bouton company also sold air-cooled internal combustion engines to people who wanted to build their own vehicles, and these engines were quickly adapted to motorcycles.Imported to the United States as early as 1896, they were closely studied by the gearheads of the day. Both the first Indian and Harley-Davidson engines, while not exact copies, were builtusing the same general design and engineering principles. De Dion-Bouton also developed a carburetor that was a vast improvement over the makeshift mixers of the day.This complete and documented 1899 model was brought to the United States in the 1920s by Vincent Bendix, who was interested in studying its innovative front brake. Bendix developedthe modern automobile brake from his study of this little trike, making it not only the Lucy of the motorcycle world, but the missing link of automobile brake development.ESTIMATE UPON REQUEST