MTFCA Forum

Hi All,
I found this image on a local Northport village calendar. Does anybody know what kind of car this is? I don't recognize it and I've been looking for photos of it all over. Thanks,
John

Franklin....

1916 Model 9, 4 passenger Roadster

Jerry,
thank you. You are exactly right. The car in question is a Franklin. I've never seen one of these. Quite beautiful cars. When I searched 1916 Franklin, I found a bunch of versions. Now I want one. Ha ha.
Do you have one of these beauties?
John

I had a 24 , great but noisy. They had an air cooled engine . The body and may parts like the motor base and the trans case were aluminum.
Sadly I sold it back in the late 50s or early 60s

I had a 1930 Franklin when I was a teen. It needed some work on the valves and other things. The parts were VERY expensive. 6 separate head gaskets etc. It also had aluminum connecting rods. It had overhead valves with an oiler in the firewall which fed oil to the valve stems. It also had an updraft carburetor which would catch on fire if it backfired. It also had suicide lock rims on the wheels which could fly off when you changed a tire. It had a 4 speed manual transmission.
I drove it to the Big Boy hamburger drive in where many teens would gather because it was only a block from our high school. A friend who had a 39 Plymouth wanted to drag me so we drove very fast. It developed a rod knock at that time and before I had driven home it threw a rod right through the aluminum crankcase. So that one ended in the junk yard. I did make a new friend, George Franklin, because he wanted to see my Franklin car. To make this about Model T's, they are much easier to work on and to get used or repro parts.
Norm

Just had to find a nice picture of the 1916 Franklin 9 four passenger roadster. It was air cooled, and not inexpensive. Here is a beauty:

Another Franklin oddity: they all had wooden frames.

To each their own. I think that Franklin is ugly compared to the Model T.

I love Franklin automobiles! When I was about five years old, my dad bought one, a late one about 1932. He had plans to restore it, but wound upselling it just a few years later
Years ago, I had a friend in the hobby that owned nearly a dozen Franklins. Most very nicely restored. His collection went from a very early 1904 runabout up to full Classics about 1930. He drove them often on various club tours. Always reliable and good performers, it was a joy to follow them on tours.

I tried to buy a Franklin about 10 years ago. It was registered and parked (legally) on a street in Framingham, MA. It had a For Sale sign on it but no address or telephone number. I left three notes on it - actually one note went in to the car, as the driver's side window was down a crack. I never got any response, so I decided that the so-called "seller" wasn't real serious. It was a sedan and really nice on the outside, but the interior needed some love. The interior didn't bother me as I know a person in MA that does top-quality interiors. For relevance, he did the front seat of my T.