Mrs. Wilber’s Limo, Sidney’s Hatfield Among Classic Car Museum Offerings

3-26-10 

By LAURA COX : NORWICH
A visit to the Northeast Classic Car Museum is a trip through time, but also a window into local history.
There are horse-drawn carriages converted into cars.  Steam-powered and electrical cars.  Air-cooled engines.  Even a solar-powered car.
Then there are the local novelties.
There’s a 1928 Cunningham seven-passenger Berline, a limousine custom-built for Esther R. Wilber of Oneonta’s Wilber Bank family.  It has just 5,000 miles on the odometer. The label says that the car has many amenities for the passenger’s comfort such as a hot water heater, electric cigarette lighters, down pillows, silk shades and a microphone to speak to the driver.
Only a few of these cars exist today and this is the only known all-original. It is on loan from Dr. and Mrs. Henry Doerge of Middleburgh.
Then there’s the 1921 Hatfield touring car and a 1914 O-We-Go cyclecar both on loan from Jim Mead of Owego. The Hatfield was made by the Cortland Cart & Carriage Company in Sidney, operated by Louis J. Hatfield and sold for $1,400 in its day. Only 2,554 cars of this kind were produced and the one on display is only one of a few left.
The O-We-Go sold for just $385 and was manufactured in Owego in 1914. The museum label reads, “Cyclecars, not much more than four-wheeled motorcycles, had been popular in France and England for a few years before the craze hit the United States in 1913. It seemed like the perfect business opportunity for C.B. Hatfield Jr. to build these cars, since he and his father had been manufacturing inexpensive ‘everyman’s’ cars since 1906.”
The O-We-Go business was not successful because the cost of Ford’s Model T was reduced at the same time and there had been a general dissatisfaction with cyclecars. The car on display at the museum was found “derelict and in modified condition in Utah in 1995” and was restored by Jim Mead. The car is believed to be the only O-We-Go to have survived.
Most of the museum’s collection is on loan by car enthusiast George Staley of Lincklaen (about 30 miles northwest of Norwich). It was with his generous loan of cars that the museum first got its start in May 1997. They opened with 50 cars in a 30,000 sq. ft. facility. Since then they have increased the car display to over 125 cars and have acquired other buildings which have increased their space to 80,000 sq. ft. 
Museum board member Steve Purdy estimates 50-60 percent of the cars on display are from Staley’s personal collection.
“Mr. Staley was the driving force in getting the museum going, as he wanted a place to display his cars,” said Purdy who added that the idea grew as a group who wanted to draw in the tourism industry to Norwich partnered with the idea.
The display of cars moves in a relatively linear fashion toward modern times, with a few special exhibits such as the Franklin air cooled vehicles and a temporary exhibit on antique tractors which will be moved out in time to make way for an exhibit of race cars opening on May 14.
The museum, which draws a crowd from around the world, has received a disproportionately small number of local visitors, said Purdy. One of the largest populations to come through the museum is tourists from Israel. Sometime in the past 13 years the museum made it into an Israeli tourist book and the museum receives many visits from tourists who come to visit Niagara Falls and drive down to see the classic cars before returning home.