The Benson Automobile

MILLER PAVILION

Exhibit Hours

 

In the years before Henry Ford developed the automotive assembly line in 1914, untold numbers of tinkerers built cars in their backyards. Nils Benson was one of those "garage inventors." Benson and James Chance, his teen-aged assistant, began building this car in 1904. Benson made some of the parts at his Portland machine shop on SE Grand Avenue. Other parts were obtained from Chicago, while the rubber tires came all the way from Indochina. According to Chance, "It was the first car completely built in Oregon but we never thought nothing about it at the time."

In 1905, Chance ran the car for three months at the Lewis and Clark Fair. Afterwards, a crankshaft and two more cylinders were added before it was officially completed in 1906. The finished car had four cylinders, a seat for two, a box behind the seat for carrying supplies, a "unique feature in…speed changing devices…to prevent stripping the gears," and a patented steering wheel.

Although Benson had planned to build more cars, he did not. This one and only Benson automobile was eventually stored in a shed behind Benson's house on NE 92nd Place. It was sold to a neighbor, William McAllister, in 1951, who in turn sold it to Walter Rusk in 1973. When Rusk offered it as a donation to the Oregon Historical Society in 1999, OHS eagerly accepted this unique automobile as a 3-dimensional example of garage inventors' handiwork.

Among antique car buffs, the question is, "How much of the original automobile is still present in the car today?"  The Benson resided for many years in a shed, and Oregon weather is not kind to wood. Tires rot. Metal rusts. Among collectors, restoration of pieces is not unheard of, nor does it necessarily detract from the car's significance. Even though substantially restored in 1973-1974 by Rusk, the Benson auto is a physical record of the car over time — the restoration itself is an integral part of the car's history.

Not so lucky was the 'Beaver Six' car, manufactured in Gresham at the Beaver State Motor Company in 1912. It too laid abandoned in a back yard, where folklore has it the owner got tired of looking at it and burned it.

Restoring historical artifacts, as long as they are honestly represented as such, is a common occurrences, and can better enable viewers to imagine another time, another way of living — making history come alive.