Most of the cars seen today are very different than the vehicles that once existed in the late 1800s and early 1900s. One of the more inventive vehicles created at that time was the T&F Cycle Car by T&F Cycle Car Co. of New Salem.
The company was founded by Levi Flagg and William E. Taft in 1906. Flagg always had an interest in mechanics and had started a machine shop in his father’s chicken coop, according to Donald Flye of Petersham, a former New Salem resident and member of the Swift River Valley Historical Society. Flye has always had an interest in cars, he said, since he began driving a Model T around back roads as a teenager.
Wayne Hachey of New Salem, who helped Flye build a reproduction of the Cycle Car, said that Flagg was a bit of an entrepreneur. Along with the car company, Flagg also at one point ran a telephone company in the Stowell building, now the police station next to the town hall in New Salem, and owned a Jenny bi-plane, he said.
The Cycle Car that the company sold was one-person wide and sometimes had a tandem seat, Flye said. The vehicle was driven off of a V-12 Belt which ran from the forward part of the car to the rear wheels. At first, the vehicles were electric, then later the company changed to two-cylinder gas vehicles, according to Hachey. As for the engines, Flye said, there is some information that says they may have been air cooled and other information that says they may have been water cooled. There may have been both types, he added.
The Cycle Car was known as a kit car. “Like Sears and Roebuck, that at one point had a house you could order and assemble, in the same sense you could order parts and assemble this car,” Hachey said. The company made up a bunch of parts, which they would sell to people, their customers would put these parts aside, buy some more and then when the customer had a complete set they would put the car together, Flye said. Among the vehicle accessories were headlights and horns. “Some say they had fenders, some say they didn’t; there are conflicting reports,” said Flye.
Although none of the original vehicles are known to still be in existence, Flye and Hachey have created a replica of the car based on company brochures and drawings by Flye’s friend and artist Basil Sharpe of Medford, said Flye. Hachey said the replica of the car came about when Flye brought a picture of the car to Old Home Day in 2018. “We got talking about how we should build a replica He called me six months later and said, are you ready to start building a replica?” Hachey said. He added that he helped with the upholstery, welding and painting. “We never got it motorized we are still working on the steering. It is still a work in progress,” Hachey said.