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Our cars.
The rebuilded
"selfpropelling" carriage from 1897. It is possible to drive.
Original car is preserved at Technical Museum Sweden.
The first Swedish car was
designed and built at Surahammar in the county of Västmanland in central Sweden. This was
in 1897, and the name of the creator was Gustaf Eriksson, a 37 year old engineer employed at
the Surahammars Bruks AB. After some persuasions he had succeeded in getting permission from
the management to build a "self-propelling" carriage on trail. It was
provided with an internal combustion engine that Eriksson had designed himself, and
ran on paraffin (kerosene) since he considered petrol too dangerous. However, a test run
in April the following year, with Eriksson himself at the "wheel" and three
courageous Surahammars Bruk employers as passengers, was not successful. After the engine
had stalled several times, necessitating repeated push-starts, a mill wall happened to get
in the way and the car was wrecked.
However, Eriksson was not
discouraged. He went on building cars - now fitted with petrol engines. This car
is preserved at Technical Museum in Sweden. Subsequently he
was transferred to a subsidiary of Surahammars Bruk, Vagnaktiebolaget in Södertälje
(VABIS), where series production of cars, lorries and later on buses commenced under his
eye. The manufacturing of private cars vas discontinued in 1924, whereas the lorry and bus
plant developed into one of the foremost in the world: from 1911 under the company name of
Scania-Vabis, and from 1969 Saab-Scania.
Eriksson´s second car has been
preserved, and nowadays it is one of the most treasured items in the Technical Museum in
Stockholm.
We also have an VABIS from
1903 built in Södertälje. It is car number seven from a series of seven. The six first
cars was built for driving on railways, the one at the museum was the only one with tires
for driving on the roads.
Vabis 1903
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