1910 McKay

Canadian Automotive Museum Audio Content

Our bilingual audio tour explores less well-known stories from the collection, in the voices of the Museum’s volunteers, historians, vehicle experts and more.
Transcript:
Hello, I’m Ian Ashing, one of the Automotive Museum’s volunteers; I help maintain the vehicles in the collection. Brass Era cars like this 1910 McKay conjure up images of a different time. A time when men and women dressed for driving in long coats, gloves, and scarves to keep the mud and dust off. The cars putt-putting along on crude engines that leaked oil all over the place. The constant breakdowns. The McKay is definitely a product of that time, but it has the bones, and the credentials, of a true endurance racer.

The McKay company was the closest the Canadian Maritimes came to producing a domestic automobile. Made with licensed American parts in Amherst, Nova Scotia, they sold well, and were by all accounts excellent at long distances. In 1911, a McKay drove from Nova Scotia to Saskatchewan, a distance of more than 4000 kilometers; not long after the cars won several of Nova Scotia’s first auto races, proving that they had speed and endurance to spare. Despite its success, the company went out of business after only a few years; the collapse of their parts supplier in the U.S. meant no new cars, despite demand.

Keeping a vehicle this rare in such good condition is a lot of work. It needs constant dusting and wiping down. The many brass components have to be polished and buffed to remove fingerprints and areas where the metal has lost its shine. In some of the tighter areas, like on the housing for the lights, we use toothbrushes to get into those hard-to-reach places. The leather seats require regular cleaning and reapplications of leather conditioner, if they’re still in good shape. Cracked leather is very difficult to clean without damaging it. With a little bit of elbow grease and hard work, though, we can bring back some of the spectacle of the brass era.