You saw the title and laughed to yourself. Yep, you’re thinking that it’s something easy like the 1914 Cadillac or something along those lines. Well, you’re wrong. The first V8 car in America was not produced in Detroit. In fact, it was produced in a small town located in southeastern Massachusetts by a guy who used to make taffy pulling machines.

In the early 1900s there were car makers all across the country. They were small companies, usually born from guys who ran other types of mechanical businesses and who became enamored with internal combustion engines. There were no rules, regulations, or people telling you what you could and could not do. Detroit was a foreign place located many days away by train. There was no such thing as the Big 3. If you could scheme it up, you could build it.

The first V8 powered car built in America was the Buffum Runabout. It was produced in Abington, Massachusetts, from 1905 through (roughly) 1910. It featured a 6.6L V8 that made a whopping 40 hp. According to a Wikipedia entry (stop rolling your eyes) the remains of one car exist in Oklahoma we have personally seen an intact Buffum V8 at the Owl’s head Transportation Museum in Maine. That’s pretty neat. Maybe it was destined that the east coast offices of BangShift.com be located in the very town that the first V8 car in America was produced. It is cosmically cool. Recently the car we saw at the Owl’s Head was apparently sold to a museum in Europe. The last (we think) remaining example of the Buffum Runabout will leave the USA soon, likely never to return.

The factory building still stands. It is now occupied by a pizza place (which rules all) and a “leasing” company that looks, ummm, weird. The building appears to sport it’s original copper gutters and flashing, with awesome patina. It certainly does not look like the type of place you’d consider seeing cars built in. Back then, things were completely different. Companies like Buffum wanted to sell cars to their local area and because they were such a new thing, there was some merit in that idea. As things tend to go, the market passed them by and they faded into history

Here are a few photos of both the car and the current state of the factory, which was built in the mid-1800s, long before Buffum built his cars there.