Starting Up A Car 100 Years Ago

Before the invention of the electric starter, getting a car in motion was a demanding exercise, with emphasis on the word, ‘exercise’. Jake Venter recalls the days of hand cranking.

- Jake Venter

Starting a modern car is almost effortless. Climb in, select neutral, rotate the combined ignition and starter motor switch, and drive off.

Go back 30 or 40 years to the days when engines were still fitted with carburettors, and you would have had an extra step: engaging the automatic choke by flooring the throttle pedal once, or pulling out the manual choke knob, before turning the starter.

It’s all rather sedate. For a livelier vehicle-starting experience, you need to go back 90 years or more.

It took engineers from the dawn of motoring in 1886, until about 1910 to come up with practical, reliable ignition and carburetion systems. Starting was a hit-andmiss affair, and breakdowns were common, but progress was so swift that, by the early 1920s, car design had settled down to offer reliable motoring.