Haynes Pioneer History

The Pioneer was Elwood Haynes' first automobile, a single-cylinder, roughly one-horsepower gasoline carriage he had built with the help of machinists Elmer and Edgar Apperson at the Riverside Machine Works in Kokomo, Indiana. Wary that the untested machine might injure spectators, Haynes had it towed by horse out to Pumpkinvine Pike, about three miles east of town, before its first run.

On July 4, 1894, the Pioneer ran under its own power for about six miles at six to seven miles per hour. It is generally regarded as one of the first successful gasoline automobiles built in the United States — by the Smithsonian's account the second American gasoline car to be road-tested, after Charles Duryea's, and built two years before Henry Ford's Quadricycle.

Haynes preserved the car and donated it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1910, where it is exhibited as the oldest surviving American-built automobile. The 1894 run became the foundation of the Haynes marketing claim 'America's First Car,' and of Kokomo's self-description as the 'City of Firsts.'