HH Buffum Co.

Buffum was an American automobile manufactured from 1901 until 1906 by the HH Buffum Co of Abington, Massachusetts.

The HH Buffum Company was an American automobile and motor boat manufacturer during the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. It was in 1901  of Henry Buffum founded and was based in Abington in Plymouth County in Massachusetts . In the period of 13 years, about 70 cars were built. This small manufacturer are some milestones in automotive history attributable: in 1895 Buffum built the first car with a four-cylinder engine . This car is now in the Louwman Museum in The Hagueto see. Later, his built HH Buffum Company a race car with 180 ° - V8 engine , the eight-cylinder-road vehicle and the first "production" race car is considered to be the first manufactured in the United States because it was listed in the sales catalog of the 1904th

The Buffums built between 1901 and 1904 were powered by 4-cylinder engines,but later in 1904 they built the Model G Greyhound, which was a racing model powered by two horizontal four-cylinder engines coupled together to make a flat-eight cylinder engine.

 The Greyhound was the first 8-cylinder car offered for sale in the United States. In 1906 another eight-cylinder powered car was offered for sale, although this time the engine was a V-8.

Henry Buffum came in 1890  from the West Coast to Abington and was mainly concerned with the automation of shoe production , for which he is a nail and a sewing machine constructed. In addition, he ran a small bicycle construction and carried out repairs on mechanical equipment. Among the numerous inventions of the inventor and designer is also the spray head of a sprinkler system . Buffum received numerous patents for his developments. 

Six automobiles were created in his workshop before 1900 probably incidentally in his spare time. Each had improvements over its predecessor. Afraid that his ideas might be stolen from him, Buffum rarely drove those automobiles. 

The Buffum Four Cylinder Stanhope is one of the oldest automobiles from American production in roadworthy condition. With the work on his first car began Buffum already in 1894. The finished the following year vehicle is remarkable in several respects, and represents a milestone in automotive history. It is the world's first car with a four-cylinder engine, which also specially made for this purpose. So it is not an adapted stationary engine . The valves are top-controlled , which represents a very early application of this principle. The engine is typically mounted transversely time under the driver's seat and consisting of individually cast cylinders with removable cylinder head , on a common crankshaft housing are attached. The Buffum designed water cooler supplies each cylinder with its own cooling line. 

The power transmission takes place via a two-speed planetary gear and a drive chain on the rear axle at which no differential is provided. The controls are innovative: The two forward gears are inserted by means of a lever on the right side of the seat. A knob at the top of this lever regulates the speed. For brake and reverse each foot pedal is provided. 

Chassis and body were probably created with the help of the local coachman George Pierce (not identical with George N. Pierce , the founder of Pierce-Arrow ). The frame was made of steel tubes, the car body is suspended suspended above the actual chassis.

Stanhope is a body design from the early days of the automobile. The name goes back to the same named coach . As a motor vehicle, she refers to a slightly larger and more comfortable motor buggy or runabout .

There are indications that Henry Buffum has temporarily used the vehicle as a test vehicle for his ideas. He kept it until his death. It is preserved and is now located in the Louwman Museum in The Hague ( Netherlands ). 

It was not until 1900 that Henry Buffum began accepting orders for automobiles; his clients mostly came from Abington and surrounding areas. Obviously, the business was doing well enough to envisage regular production. Buffum always sought independent technical solutions and was more interested in technical improvements than in regulated production, where historians see a possible reason for the company's later failure.

The first model of the HH Buffum Company was introduced in 1901 and heavily influenced by French designs 20 HP . This vehicle is one of the first in the United States produced with front-mounted engine and rear-wheel drive (" Système Panhard "). The water-cooled four-cylinder was designed as a boxer engine with centrally located flywheel . The power transmission took place by means of drive chains. The wheelbase was 94½ inches (2426 mm). The innovations included a means actuated pedal starter. The 20 HP was only a Roi-des-BelgesBody available. The handmade aluminum structure Buffum made himself; he weighed only 120 lb (about 55 kg). The car was at that with a price of USS $ 2500.- upper middle class settled. He remained until and with the model year 1903, the only regular model on offer.A single source called a model with four-cylinder boxer engine and 16 HP in 1902.

As the first road vehicle with a V8 engine applies the French racing and world record car Darracq 200 (also known as Darracq V8 ) of 1901, the engine consists of two Grand Prix engine blocks, which were placed on a common crankcase . The vehicle exists and is in a mobile condition. 

As a possible "contender" on the first mass-produced passenger cars with V8 engine is occasionally called the Rolls-Royce V8 of 1905. From this, however, only three copies were produced; the only one that was delivered to a customer later also withdrew the plant. V8 engines gained some popularity for propulsion of aircraft. A prominent manufacturer was the French Société Antoinette , which in 1906 also presented a car with a V8 engine with 7270 cc displacement. This was probably only built to order. Instead of transmission and differential this vehicle had hydraulic clutches . AntoinetteEngines were from the Adams Manufacturing Company in Bedford ( Bedfordshire , England , United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland reconstructed) under license. Adams also introduced in 1906 the 35/40 HP with a slightly smaller Antoinette -V8. 

In 1910, both Renault and De Dion-Bouton launched V8 commercial vehicles . The latter company also launched a corresponding car, which was sold in up to three sizes until 1923. That's why the CJ and DM models (35 and 20 CV, respectively) are the first regular-production V8 passenger cars. A license replica of this engine was made at the General Motors Corporation subsidiary Northway , which supplied such engines to Cadillac , Oldsmobile and Oakland . The 1914 introduced for the model year 1915 Cadillac Type 51 is therefore usually called the first US production car with V8 engine.

No less complex was the development of the first V8 passenger car of US production. There were already two serious attempts in 1906 to launch such a vehicle on the market. Which of the two was actually the first, can not be more clear from today's perspective. One provider was the Hewitt Motor Company , an automobile and commercial vehicle manufacturers in New York City . Its owner, Edward Ringwood Hewitt , had excellent connections to Europe and the aforementioned Adams Manufacturing Company . From there he moved to the licensed version of the 7.4 liter Antoinette engine, which he introduced in 1907 Hewitt used 50/60 HP . While the original French mechanically controlled intake valves had, they were in Adams "atmospheric", ie by vacuum regulated version ( sniffing valves ).  

The HH Buffum Company had with the new 40 HP almost at the same time a V8 model on offer, also 1906 for the model year 1907 had been presented. Like all Buffum vehicles, this one had a self-constructed engine. This had a square bore / stroke ratio of 4 inches (101.6 mm), resulting in a displacement of 402.146 ci (6590 cc). The rating of 40 HP seems occupied, but may have been individually determined because only around 1915, the ALAM successor organization National Automobile Chamber of Commerce (NACC) listed V8 engines in their rating list. The wheelbase was 100 inches (2540 mm).

The HH Buffum Company produced until 1907 cars, most recently only the 40 HP . Then she went bankrupt. In October, she was acquired by Bickney Hall of Taunton and reorganized as a Hall Manufacturing Company . Planned was the continuation of the last Buffum eight-cylinder as Hall 40 HP , but it seems to have come only to the sale of stock and assembled from existing components vehicles. The production was finally stopped before the end of the year 1907. ^[

Henry Buffum then moved to Laconia ( New Hampshire ) and spent some years concentrating on the construction of motorboats. In 1914, he constructed a high-quality cycle car with the Laconia , of which fewer than 100 were produced in the first and only year of production. He did not set up his own company for boat building or automobile production.  Henry Buffum died in 1933 on the west coast.