**A Rare and Mysterious Automotive Experience**

I recently had the opportunity to get behind the wheel of an Owens Magnetic automobile, a vehicle that is truly one-of-a-kind. This unique car has been a part of my life for several years, and I've grown accustomed to its quirks and characteristics. As I put it into gear, I felt a sense of excitement and trepidation - would this strange machine work as smoothly and efficiently as I'd heard? The answer, thankfully, was a resounding yes.

**A Model T but Without the Gears**

One of the most striking aspects of the Owens Magnetic is its design. Unlike traditional automobiles, which rely on gears to transmit power from the engine to the wheels, this car uses an electric motor to generate electricity. This means that I don't have to worry about grinding gears or shifting through multiple speeds - simply put my foot down and away we go! The electric brake system also engages smoothly, giving me confidence as I drive.

**A Different Era of Automotive Technology**

To understand the Owens Magnetic's unique design, it's helpful to consider its historical context. In 1916, most people were driving at a leisurely pace of around 35-40 miles per hour - anything faster was considered quite fast! The electric motor and transmission system that power this car are remarkably efficient, allowing me to cruise at speeds of up to 16 miles per hour without needing to worry about fueling up. And when I do need to stop, the electric clay cuts out seamlessly.

**A Comparison to Modern Technology**

For those who may be familiar with modern electric vehicles, such as the Chevy Volt, there are some interesting similarities between the Owens Magnetic and these more contemporary cars. Like the Volt, the Owens Magnetic has an electric motor that generates electricity to power its electric transmission system. However, unlike the Volt, which requires a significant amount of time and effort to recharge its batteries, this car can run indefinitely with no loss of energy - thanks to the advanced lead-acid battery technology used in 1916.

**A Testimony to Innovative Engineering**

I've had the pleasure of learning about the Owens Magnetic from various electrical engineers who have examined this remarkable vehicle. These experts are in awe of its design and functionality, which they describe as "bulletproof" and "go anywhere." The car's bodywork is made of magnesium, a lightweight yet incredibly strong metal that provides excellent protection against impact. And with an oil change every seven years or so, I've experienced firsthand the remarkable durability of this vehicle.

**A Conversation with the Car's Designer**

Unfortunately, I never had the chance to meet the designer of the Owens Magnetic, but through various online sources and interviews with electrical engineers who have worked on restoring this car, I was able to learn more about its origins. According to these accounts, the car's design was influenced by early experimentation with electromagnetic systems - the result being a vehicle that is both functional and beautifully designed.

**A Unique Driving Experience**

One of the most enjoyable aspects of driving the Owens Magnetic is its unique response to different driving conditions. When I need more power, simply shifting down a gear (or rather, dropping it down a gear) provides an instant boost in speed. And with my Apple Watch's speed app providing me with real-time data, I can monitor my progress and adjust my driving accordingly.

**A Marvel of Engineering - Still Mysterious After All These Years**

As I reflect on my experience with the Owens Magnetic, I'm struck by its beauty and simplicity. This car is a true marvel of engineering - a testament to human ingenuity and innovation. Even after 120 years, it remains an enigma, with many of its design principles still not fully understood today. Nevertheless, its functionality and performance make it a joy to drive, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to experience it firsthand.

**The Future of Automotive Technology**

In conclusion, the Owens Magnetic is more than just a fascinating piece of automotive history - it represents a significant step forward in the evolution of transportation technology. As we continue to explore new forms of sustainable energy and innovative design, vehicles like this one remind us that even the most seemingly impractical ideas can become reality with dedication, perseverance, and a willingness to think outside the box.

**Final Thoughts**

I hope that my experience with the Owens Magnetic has inspired readers to consider the many possibilities of alternative automotive technology. Whether you're an enthusiast of vintage cars or simply someone looking for a unique driving experience, this remarkable vehicle is sure to captivate and intrigue. And who knows? Maybe one day we'll look back on our own designs and marvel at how far we've come - just as I do every time I get behind the wheel of this incredible car.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthis is probably the most unusual car i've had certainly one of the rarest i don't know how many of these owens magnetics are left can't be more than a dozen or so in the whole country i don't think i've ever met anyone that's ever heard of this or i have any idea what it is they call it the car of a thousand speeds and the magic of magnitude you know it's not really magnet i guess it is magnesium but it's electricity still a bigger mystery now as it was back then welcome to episode of jay leno's garage the car featuring today one of the rarest most unusual fascinating nobody's ever heard of automobiles my 1916 owens magnetic i've had this for about 30 years i look forever to find one they just didn't seem to exist anymore this is a electric car that's powered by a gasoline engine now that almost sounds like what doesn't make any sense why just drive it with a gasoline engine well it's interesting you know in the early 1900s or the late 1800s there were electric cars in fact they're electric cars before they're gasoline cars uh my 1909 baker electric which you've seen on the show a bunch of times but battery technology was not very good you couldn't go long distances what this is the gas engine powers an electric generator which runs the car so you can get mileage long mileage or high mileage rather with electricity powering the vehicle the advantage of this is there's no transmission there's no shifting i'm going to explain how this works it's very unusual there is no mechanical connection between the engine and the rest of the drivetrain the engine gasoline engine is separate and what you have is for lack of a bedroot almost like a flywheel think of a horseshoe magnet going around an armature and creating electricity and that's what powers this car so when they call it the magnetic you go down the road with this weird kind you know when you put two mag two polar opposite magnets together and they sort of fight each other that's what this feels like going down the road there's no crunching of gears there's no which was seen as a huge advantage back in the day because a lot of people could not drive a stick shift or the clutch is too heavy this you just move this lever here to go from one quote quadrant to another i've got a fascinating piece of film my friend scott anderson sent me this it was filmed in 1916 to explain how the owens magnetic worked there's some footage of people in the snow with one of these driving it but then they show you how uh how the engine actually works how it makes electricity obviously it's a silent film but this is a you know 100 and something years old this this film it was done on nitrate stock i had it transferred to a digital uh format so i could put it on a dvd so you know i wouldn't eventually nitrate can ignite like that it can also deteriorate quickly so we got something that'll last forever it's not very long but just give you some idea of how how it works how it generates electricity let's take a look at the engine first the engine is a buddha now buddha was a company oh there are a lot of companies just made engines continental beaver a bunch of these companies and they were used for everything running sawmills to power boats to automobiles so the engine itself is pretty traditional you've got an autovac which works as a fuel pump this is your horn here this is the unit that allows you to use the electric transmission uh it says right on it do not attempt to play with this see your dealer well there haven't been anyone's magnetic dealers now for almost 100 years so we just had to take our chances with that what's missing here you'll see an exposed gear that is a air compressor you put that on there so you can fill your tires if you need be this car sounds for the longest time because this piece here this valve cover was porous and oil literally came out of every facet of it we sealed it we did what we could and we had to make a new one using 3d printing this is one of the first items we 3d printed let me get that and show you what i'm talking about this is the original valve cover now when you look inside you can see first of all the metal is just starting to flake off all that porosity as you see we tried to coat it and seal it but that all wore off and you'd go down the road and literally oil would ooze out of every pore we scanned this using our feral arm and our stratasys printer and we're able to make another one you can see it was all as i said it's all flaking it looks good it looks okay but it's actually i mean oil came out of every pour so we made it in first in plastic and this is a great thing about 3d printing you're not going to find this valve cover anywhere okay so uh as you see and we're able to seal it and then we send it off to our pattern maker uh to uh well this is our pattern i guess we sent it off and had it made up in aluminum now there is uh there is 3d printing that actually does it in metal now but that's not what we use we want to do it first we want to make sure it fit we fitted it ran it with the plastic cover on it just to see if it would fit and it would work fine and and so made a brand new one which you cannot tell from the original i mean it copies every part of it there's no casting numbers or anything on here but if there were it would have picked them up and the cool thing about 3d printing is you can add extra material in areas where you know it might be susceptible to porosity or cracking or anything of that nature so that was that was pretty cool you know when i first got this we we built the chassis first and for about two years i just drove the chassis around because people are fascinated to see the electrics we put a glass window in it uh but then what happened was well by time put the body and everything on we couldn't show people that anymore so i've got some pictures let me get those okay here's some early pictures when we first got it as you can see a lot of rust and corrosion the climate in norway not conducive to saving cars here is the chassis before we obviously did it there's the that unit again that controls everything with resistors in it there's some shots of the tail and the electric transmission okay here's the body it was pretty much all there but the wood just all rotted as you can see but you got the thing that people would hang a blanket or a laprobe there because cars didn't have heat especially in the back and open guards like that so you would wrap that around the blanket around there another shot of the body some of the original leather it looks like it's good but it's so brittly touched and it fell apart the firewall's not in yet there these hold the top down as you can see this is pretty rough but you can see why people didn't think it was worth anything sitting in norway for 50 years now this is a brochure called the abc of the owens magnetic uh okay this is what you saw in that footage a while ago you see this comes off the engine let's see if we can get it better okay okay there's the engine there at the end of the end of the engine there's that horseshoe magnet let me do this you see and the horseshoe magnet spins at crankshaft speed that creates electrical fields or it spins this which runs the electric motor and then you have i will show you on the steering wheel these various points here there's a cutaway again and there's the whole chassis right there uses no gears of any kind to shift the car this is a report by the society of automotive engineers i got the original this is a copy on the owens magnetic with the electric transmission just to show you how it works let me find the okay here we go okay here is i'll have it up in the lift in a minute you'll see this let me get this here's a diagram as the engine crankshaft comes in now you know that horseshoe piece there it is right there and this is your electric transmission here and transfers it back as you can see this at no point does the engine actually touch or connect with the transmission other than through electricity or magnetism as they call it which is kind of cool these are all the positions you have charging starting off and break first second third fourth fifth and then direct each one of these gives you more or less electricity first gears at the most if you're on a hill or you're trying to hold it or something i'll explain that in a second you can the batteries are low you can pull over move the lever to charge rev the engine a little bit and that will charge the batteries that's not as necessary now because of these you know modern optimum batteries which hold a charge and are much more potent i guess you could say now the genius behind the owens magnetic was a man named justice ents he developed this electric transmission and patented in 1900 he actually built it in 1897. i've got a copy of the patent right here i just wanted to track it down here it is here see there's his name it's sort of similar to the way a lot of diesel locomotives and things work but it's 1900 he patented this the trouble with this car was it was so expensive this was nine thousand dollars to build and uh which was a lot of money in 1916. you figure model t was just a few hundred dollars so you can buy 50 model t's and this car has a fascinating history this came out in norway name guy named willie gilbert bought it at the time he bought this car there are only 123 cars in norway this is the only owens magnetic at the time i think it was the most expensive car in norway willie gilbert was a bit of a showman he's also in the olympics i think he i think he won a medal in the olympics and in uh either 16 or 1920 uh somewhere around that point but he did he did win uh a medal uh so it's it's interesting uh the car has very low mileage on it's kind of like 10 000 miles because what happened was it was bought i guess about the time of world war one uh then it was used for a while then it was hidden for 50 years to keep it away from the nazis and whatnot who would have confiscated was hidden away then in the 60s it was brought to america a guy named izzy lieberman who i got it from the interesting older gentleman it's needed obviously a lot of work i'm so grateful to people that saved it because as you can see from those photos it was just uh really at least in norway a piece of junk nobody why would anyone want an old junky car it didn't make any sense but in those days car collecting it's not like it is now uh it was just a car that was outdated and nobody could figure it out i mean if you got in this car without having some prior knowledge i don't think you'd know how to drive it or even start it because the starting process is extremely simple but really unusual and i will show that to you in in just a minute this car also has electric brakes which is fascinating when you're driving this car what you do is say you're going 30 miles an hour 40 miles an hour rather than step on the brake you move the lever up to the what is it the uh oh to the neutral position and you hear and that's you hear the electric motor just connect and power it down and just slow it down so you don't use the brakes until you actually want to come to a full stop you know you slow down using the transmission and you just move that lever up and down and when we go for a drive later you'll see it's really quite simple and actually kind of fun and fascinating how it works and we all know how regen works in the tesla and the chevy volt it's the exact same thing on those cars you can adjust the amount of regen and this one is pretty much fixed but it works very well and it only has brakes on the rear but you know it's enough because you're slowing it down using the transmission so the brakes don't get hot trying to stop a 4 000 pound car i think that's about what this thing weighs uh engine nothing special as i said just a regular six-cylinder engine of about 60 horsepower something of that nature uh which was quite a bit back in 1916. don't forget a model t only had 22 horsepower and that went 40 something miles an hour but you can drive this along at 60 65 and you're fine but as you go down the road you just you know i read an article a period was written period back in the day and it was a bit like if you've ever been a wagon with a sail on it or a car driven by a propeller where it's cutting through the air that's what this is like because you don't feel any mechanical drive it's all electric and extremely smooth well you'll see and you'll see in just a minute here let me shut this hood again i'll show you the other side uh carburation side nothing unusual pretty standard but probably want to see it anyway as you can see we didn't do a whole lot to the engine this car had less than 10 000 miles on it so we kept it pretty stock we weren't going to tear it all apart and polish all the lumens on it because i do drive it and i use it so it has all the fixtures they had in the day these are your priming cups the way these work is in cold weather you would open this like this and you pour some gas straight into the cylinder put it in put in three or four of them we do all six if you want so the car will start instantly uh that's what those are used for exhaust manifold carburetor magneto fan pretty standard fare up to this point come on i'll show you some of the power systems on the other side this is a 24 volt system let me open this as you can see we like to use the optimum batteries these batteries have been in here for 10 years and they seem to last forever the nice thing about optimus is they're sealed you know most batteries give off gas so when you take a cover like this off you've got corrosion and rust and every other kind of thing in here so these for this application worked terrific because batteries are not particularly reliable in 1916 so this they work perfectly the only concession to modern electrics is this vanner unit right here this is a 24 volt system and a 12 volt system the lights everything else is 12 volts the transmission is 24 volts with this vanity unit we have two batteries this makes sure each battery charges equally one doesn't overcharge on the other so that's that's why that's in there but that's really the only thing that ends well ants didn't even need it back then but just for the sake of uh making it easier for us to understand and work this vanity unit works terrific all right everything happens up here at the steering wheel this is uh advanced and on the ignition and this is a throttle um you've got nine points here if the batteries are low you start the engine and you move the lever up to charge you have the engine that charges the engine fairly quickly that's your starting position that is neutral that is first gear much like the first unit automobile that's your power gear that's giving the most torque that's the electric motor to get up the hill or whatnot second gear you start to cruise third fourth fifth and then if you're on a highway or a long stretch you put it in high and that would be the equivalent of one to one like an overdrive and direct dive that's how that works so that's kind of cool let me show you how this thing works to start it i throw the switch we add an electric fuel pump and put it on charge you start the car in gear i'll show you that in a minute you've got your gear lever on this side you have reverse and then you have a granny gear which is a really low mechanical gear i never used that and then the standard gear now i move this lever up here like this that's joke uh this is your ignition on neutral and start and charging when you start it you put it over here once you're running if the batteries are fully charged you don't want to overcharge them all that doesn't really happen with the vanity unit whatnot you put it in neutral and that cuts the power to it and then you just drive normally uh this is your speedometer here um i like this storage but i gotta get a shot of that that's original car and you have these little glove compartments on each side come on let's uh let's go around the back of the car and we'll take a look well as you can see the back seat is pretty spacious it's got all kinds of leg room these are jump seats i don't think i've opened these and let's see what we got here see how these work oh okay what they got here oh it's another that's another sae report oh i remember this what's this guy's name oh this is the fun part about having these kind of clothes i i put this in here a couple of years ago a gentleman named tom ricketts he sent me this from a 1911 owens magnetic look at that that's pretty cool you know i wonder what happened to this i didn't realize i had stuck it in this jump seat so well tom thank you thank you thank you very much i don't know if i called you and thanked you at the time but uh oh very cool look at this there we go here when you realize these have electric transmission in 1900 well i'm going to call him and thank him but anyway that'll give you some idea how the jump seats works there's two of those back there we redid all the wood we didn't really do this like a pebble beach restoration we just did it as a fix up an old car kind of restoration you know and it turned out pretty nice and it's a nice driving car i have to admit it took a while to figure it all out how the electrics work let me put this back here like this and you got your foot rest here kind of a safety feature keep your feet there to brace you in case for crash yeah that'll work that's kind of cool well let me show you where the gas gauge is you'll love this okay here at the back of the vehicle got one big tail light it's all you needed in 1916. about what's that 24 gallon tank something like that and conveniently the gas gauge is right here at the back so i wonder how much sure you have just stop the car get out walk around look at that oh we're almost full honey there you go okay gas cap right here with owens magnetic right in it spring shackles these are your lubricators here you just tighten those every once in a while send more grease into spring shackles and that's pretty much it so i think it's ready to bring next door and put up on the left come on okay we've got the owens magnetic up on our sterile coney lifts as you can see uh rear end is pretty standard stuff typical mechanical brakes on each side period shock absorbers this is where it gets strange when you get to where the transmission normally would be the transmission x consists of two direct current dynamos okay the forward one has this field ring attached to the engine crank and that takes the place of the ordinary flywheel that's up here this field always revolves at engine speed now the armature is mounted on the large hollow shaft which is directly connected to the propeller shaft that makes any sense to you okay the machine is called a clutch generator as hacked at both a clutch and a generator all right this is uh a resistor of some sort here i i gotta admit i'm still not totally versed on you know this guy justice ants was pretty amazing i mean i can understand it but a lot of it you know sherlock holmes used to call electricity the high priestess of full security i used to like that phrase but it's it's somewhat true because i don't really understand electricity in all its ways but the fact that you had this transmission in 1897 up here it's all standard automobile you got a crank and then the crank is primarily not to start the car but just to set timing and move the engine about and do what you need to do there honeycomb radiator nothing unusual there notice no brakes in the front straight axle all of that is still pretty much 1916 but for the most part you saw the inside of the and the other cool part about this is this engine is exactly as it was in 1916. all we did was cleaning just electrical cleaner just clean off the contacts and the brushes the brushes and the all look original they last seemingly forever they say there's so little strain on it that it'll last the life of the car and since this currently had ten thousand miles on it all i've done as you can see up there is add an electric fuel pump that's all we did there but uh okay i think we're ready to take this thing for a ride so let's uh let's show you what it's like to ride in a early hybrid car you know this is really just a chevy volt if you want to be put a fine point on it because it's basically the same principle the engine never runs the car it's always run by electricity but come on let's take it for a ride all right let's show you how we start it put it on start move the lever from neutral to s which is start put your foot on the brake because you always start this in gear you have three speeds here well two counting reverse you have a grainy gear which is really low you never use so you just put it in high as they call it just leave it in high and release the break and just move this up to s and you see there's no starter noise because it's spinning the whole engine watch it starts come to neutral put it in one and pull away don't have to touch the gas look at that very nice you never ever touch the shift lever when you want to slow down and put it neutral they engage the electric brake electric brake cancels at below 15 miles an hour i think caruso the famous opera singer had one of these the slippage generates electricity looking at our gauges here i'm going to engage electric brake now uh you tell me if you hear it engaged oh here it is here it makes that kind of mr bill kind of noise nobody knows who mr bill is there's a cartoon character inside that live but whenever whenever you put it in neutral the electric brake goes and you feel the car slow down so it hits 50 miles an hour the electric bike cuts off and you use the foot brake the advantage of that is you've got brakes in the rear wheel only and brakes back in the day were not that good so going down the hill or something the electric brake will always stop you always slow you down so it's safety feature as well this is really a fascinating automobile i never realized how unique and complicated it was you acceleration is good especially for 1916. hi guys it's obviously much smoother and quieter than a model t but the advantage is you're not grinding gears you're not shifting all the time coming to light i'll engage the electric brake oh like change okay in 1916 most people cruise at about 35 miles an hour 40 was considered kind of moving you know so 16 was was really fast and most roads were dirt so and then the electric clay cuts out it's really the same way an electric uh electric motor on a diesel locomotive work i'd imagine a chevy volt before and i think that's the best comparison can we take your foot off the gas fully disengaged and with modern batteries like this optima this thing will run forever your body will never run low but of course back in the day 1916 you had these massive lead acid deals you know i had a chevy volt for about seven years put 90 000 miles on it over which only 3 800 were gas so the engine virtually lasted forever did one oil change in seven years and i thought that was one of the greatest cars bulletproof go anywhere in it this is probably the most unusual car i've had certainly one of the rarest i don't know how many of these owens magnetics are left can't be more than a dozen or so in the whole country you know this website is all about unique driving experiences and this is really this truly is unique it's just so different than anything that was available well almost up until the chevy volt i mean you didn't have electric cars like the baker but those were sort of a prisoner of the low the uh low range you know they couldn't go very far and it took well it took a lot longer to charge batteries back in 1960 than it does now even now it takes a long time to charge the batteries you know i mean obviously compared to a fill up you know whereas with this gas car you have all the advantage of electricity with no disadvantages the biggest disadvantage was range and he didn't have to worry about range he just put more gas in it and the engine is so undistressed all it does is just runs and generates electricity but it doesn't hurt the motor so consequently this engine never ever overheats i don't think i've ever met anyone that's ever heard of this or has any idea what it is and when you look at the they call it the car of a thousand speeds and the magic of magnitude you know it's not really magnet i guess it is magnesium but it's electricity and still a bigger mystery now as it was back then but you see how smooth it is my speedometer doesn't work i got to put a new cable in so i just use my apple watch it's got a speed app on it but you know i drive this thing everywhere in the summer it doesn't overheat it runs fine you come to hell need a little more power you just drop it down a gear well it's not a i can't say the gear it'll make my oh there we go obviously it's not a performance car because that electric transmission is heavy but boy is it beautifully made all copper wiring you know just beautifully designed beautifully made when you realize it's basically 120 years old i mean that's pretty unbelievable you know i have had a few electrical engineers look at this thing and they're just blown away by it it was designed 120 years ago and i was hoping to do this one when the pandemic thing is over and we had the full crew but i don't know when that's going to be so i was out driving to the other hand said let's just do this one so i hope i explained it to you if you google owens magnetic it'll you'll find some more detailed explanations of exactly how this thing works because although we got it running and got it working i still don't quite understand it i mean i kind of knew but i'm not embarrassed to say it's over my head but this guy justice pretty amazing character i love reading books and stories about engineers because they're really the people that built this country you know a lot of people had the idea a lot of other people took the credit but the person actually designed it and made it they're the real geniuses anyway i hope you enjoyed this uh little trip down the is that memory lane i don't know i don't know what it is just something different you know we try to find unusual automotive experiences and it's fun to look at this period in history when everything wasn't set in stone you didn't have an internal combustion engine with the transmissions right you had all the experimentation going on and this is a classic example of that theory so i hope you're going to kick out of seeing how well this thing works and runs and uh i'm going to step on the electric brake now and park this thing anyway thanks for checking out see you next week oh laughs\n"