Can you date this car?

[LDW]

Here are four gentlemen on a bughunting trip (they are entomologists).

Can we get any kind of date from the model of car?

Thanks in advance!

[alanmack]

Hi LDW,
            The bodywork style is of the decade (or less) immediately prior to WW1. The picture could be later than that as I think the car is "not in it first flush of youth". I can't tell from the side view what make but  it is not a heavy model. It's not a Daimler, Lanchester or Rolls-Royce from various features.
Hope this helps a bit at least.

Alan

[jim1]

Difficult to give a date without a number plate but those collar styles are post WW1.
So probably in the 20's.

jim

[AJ100]

Just after WW1. As alanmack says the car is not new but would have been built about 10 years previously (jim's collar styles) which would put it 1920 or so. Odd that they seem preoccupied with carbide lamps as it's broad daylight.

AJ

[youngtug]

Odd that they seem preoccupied with carbide lamps as it's broad daylight.

AJ

Maybe they are going to use them to attract moths etc, after it gets dark.

[josey]

Those are cardboard moth/insect boxes on the ground too.

Bughunters used portable lamps much more than those today. Mercury vapour lamps run from the mains or a generator are used more commonly these days for moth traps. The lamps could have been used to search for pupae in undergrowth etc too. 

They probably also had a stash of ropes soaked in their own 'secret recipe' of molasses + beer etc for winding over bushes & fences to attract moths which do not come to light - known as sugaring.

ADDED: Not sure what the bugs would have thought of the pipe smoke - perhaps it knocked them out so that they could be identified 

[mazi]

I am going to stick my neck out and date the car as 1912-16 approx., based on the rather primitive door handles and the wheels/tyres, also the unusual rear bodywork as a separate item,
but it is not much use at dating the photograph, it could be used just for bughunting expeditions and been used for years


mike

[LDW]

> it is not much use at dating the photograph

No, no - it IS useful! Thanks to everyone so far - and in advance to anyone else who has a view.

As you may have surmised from the title that has been given to the pic, it has been suggested that the date is 1905. I thought it was later - possibly substantially so. I was thinking at least 1915...

The chappie with the dogcollar, 2nd right, was born 1878, and we think the one on the left is his father b1848, d1930.

[mazi]

I have found in my hoard of veteran car magazines a 1911 vinot et deguingand tourer which has all the features of your picture exept for the unusual bodywork.
it has wire wheels, the strut joining the top of the windscreen to the front wings, and a running board long enough for four men to sit on.

I also have a 1911 Cadillac with that same style of bodywork as your picture.

I cannot find a car pre 1908 with a running board of any sort, and only a few with a windscreen or fittings to fit one

so 1911 is easily possible, but a personal thought is not as early as 1905.

mike