Skip to content
The Pope Motor Car Company followed its Pope-Toledo Type XII with the 1907 Pope C/60 V, as shown here. Photo by Tomislaw Medak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

Alaska museum adds car nearly identical to Fairbanks’ first vehicle

Catherine Saunders-Watson
Catherine Saunders-Watson
The Pope Motor Car Company followed its Pope-Toledo Type XII with the 1907 Pope C/60 V, as shown here. Photo by Tomislaw Medak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
The Pope Motor Car Company followed its Pope-Toledo Type XII with the 1907 Pope C/60 V, as shown here. Photo by Tomislaw Medak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

FAIRBANKS, Alaska (AP) – With a few pops, bangs and a loud rumble, a 1906 Pope-Toledo Type XII seven-passenger touring car rolled onto Fairbanks’ streets for the first time in 90 years on Tuesday.

The Pope-Toledo, a green windshield-less car with brightly polished brass fixtures, a wood interior and a hand-crank starter, is nearly identical to the first car to arrive in Fairbanks in 1908 and is the newest addition to the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum.

“It’s the first time one has been on the road in many, many years,” said Fountainhead Museum Manager Willy Vinton after taking the historic addition for a short drive.

The Pope-Toledo first arrived in Fairbanks in 1908 aboard the steamer Cudahy. The maroon Type XV was ordered by David Laiti and used to shuttle people to Fox and excursion parties around town, museum historian Nancy DeWitt said.

The second Pope-Toledo, the same Type XII as now resides at the Fountainhead Museum, began driving the roads of Fairbanks in 1911 under the guidance of Robert “Bobby” Sheldon. A picture of Sheldon posing in front of his battered Pope-Toledo hangs in the museum.

DeWitt said the museum has been hunting for a Pope-Toledo to add to its Alaska collection for years but said it has been difficult. She said they’ve encountered only about 10 Pope-Toledos and only three that were the Type XII model.

“I’ve been looking for of these for a while,” she said. “We found a few, and they just didn’t look right. Willy found one, but it was a different model and they were asking a lot. But then, we found this one in Kentucky.”

Both DeWitt and Vinton said it’s easily in the best shape of any Pope-Toledo out there.

From finding the vehicle, it took about a year to buy it, do some restoration work, send it to a few antique car shows, prepare it for its trip to Alaska and ship it, DeWitt said.

“It’s the holy grail of the brass era,” Vinton said. “There’s not a flat piece of metal on that car.”

The Pope-Toledo Type XII features a Roi De Belge body, a beautifully curved form that is meant to resemble upholstered armchairs, DeWitt said.

The Pope-Toledo will be on display at the Fountainhead Antique Auto Museum starting Sunday. The museum is open from noon to 6 p.m. Sundays during its winter hours.

“There are cars that we won’t take out in the rain,” DeWitt said, “and this is one of them.”

___

Information from: Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, http://www.newsminer.com

#   #   #

Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE

The Pope Motor Car Company followed its Pope-Toledo Type XII with the 1907 Pope C/60 V, as shown here. Photo by Tomislaw Medak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
The Pope Motor Car Company followed its Pope-Toledo Type XII with the 1907 Pope C/60 V, as shown here. Photo by Tomislaw Medak, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.