The only surviving Galt Gas Electric hybrid

Canada’s first gas-electric automobile was built in 1914 in Galt

By David Menary

The Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa considers the 2-Cylinder Galt Gas Electric car, built in a shop off Dickson Street roughly opposite the Galt City Hall in 1914-1915, to be Canada’s first hybrid car.

The car was the brainchild of two electrical engineers and inventors. They incorporated a 10 Horsepower 125 cubic inch engine with a 3.6 Kw electric motor from Westinghouse into their design.

early days of electricity

Galt car used a Westinghouse motor

Westinghouse Canada had a large plant in Hamilton, Ontario at the time. It was part of the famed Westinghouse Electrical Corporation established by the American inventor, George Westinghouse, who (along with Thomas Edison, Nikolas Tesla, and Werner and William Siemens in Germany and England, respectively) was one of the pioneers of modern electrical engineering. The Hamilton operation was known as the Canadian Westinghouse Company since 1903.

The Galt car weighed 2,900 pounds and had a 118-inch wheelbase; it had a top speed of 48 km/h. Although it was at the vanguard of an idea that wouldn’t become both environmentally fashionable and commercially viable for nearly a century, the Galt Gas Electric hybrid was ahead of its time.

The car was slow and heavy, and its hybrid engineering presented complications that didn’t bode well for mass production at the time; yet the car ingeniously offered excellent fuel economy. At least one of the few Galt cars produced was used as a family car for nearly three decades.

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The Galt Car was not the world’s first hybrid, but it came pretty close. When it was built in 1914 it was thought to be the world’s first. But that honour went to Ferdinand Porshe whose hybrid, the Semper Vivus, was built 13 years before the Galt car appeared. However, St. Clair and Fleming’s Galt car was the first hybrid in Canada.

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The 1914 Galt Car built in the Galt Motor Company shop

Finding the world’s only remaining Galt car

As a kid growing up in Galt during the 1960s I remember seeing a blue Galt Gas Electric car parked from time to time on neighbouring Aberdeen Road. Aside from the novelty of the name—it was the same name as our city at the time—and the fact that it looked like an “old” car, I never gave it much thought in terms of it being a pioneer automobile.

Years later, when I tried to track down one of these rare cars, the road eventually led to the Canadian Automotive Museum in Oshawa. They told me that yes, they did indeed have a Galt Gas Electric car in their collection. It had been on loan to Toyota Motor Manufacturing Company in Cambridge, Ontario. The car was in my hometown, in Toyota’s front lobby, right under my nose, without me ever knowing about it.

Today the Cambridge Toyota plant is celebrating the production of its 50 millionth locally-produced car. The first-ever car to roll off the Cambridge assembly line was a Corolla, owned at one time by Mayor Claudette Millar, and is now on display at the Ken Seiling Waterloo Region Museum.

In 2014, when Toyota was producing its first hybrid automobile in Cambridge, ironically the city—then known as Galt—where Canada’s first hybrid saw the light of day, its new Lexus RX 450h was thought to be Canada’s first-ever hybrid.

Two local electrical engineers designed and built the Galt

Moffat St. Clair patented a new internal combustion engine

Indeed, Toyota was calling their new hybrid “the first full hybrid car to be manufactured in Canada.” Then it came to light that the Lexus hybrid was not the first, and what’s more, there had been a fully-engineered hybrid produced 100 years earlier, in the same city, of all places, where Toyota has been entrenched since that first Corolla (owned by the mayor) came off the assembly line in November 1988.

A stone’s throw from Dr. Harry MacKendrick’s home and office at the corner of Ainslie and Dickson Streets in downtown Galt, where the town’s first automobile was on display either in the MacKendrick driveway off Dickson Street or parked along Ainslie Street, two electrical engineers harboured dreams of entering the automotive business.

The ill-fated Canadian Motors Ltd., manufacturers of the Galt Touring Car as early as 1911, was failing and Moffat St. Clair and Edward “Eddy” Fleming had some big ideas. The pair purchased the remnants of that earlier car company and renamed it the Galt Motor Company. They set up shop on Dickson Street. By then, MacKendrick’s car was no longer unique; several people in town had an automobile, though there were still horses and buggies running through the streets of Galt. To raise money for their improved gas-electric hybrid design, the two men built and sold some gas-powered cars.

St. Clair’s new designs for their hybrid were submitted to the Patent Office on September 23, 1912, and granted July 6, 1915: “Be it known that I, MOFFAT ST. CLAIR, a citizen of the Dominion of Canada, resident of Galt, in the Province of Ontario, Dominion of Canada, have made a certain new and useful Invention in Internal-Combustion Engines; and I declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the same,- such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the invention, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, and to letters or figures of reference marked thereon, which form a part of this specification.”

The invention has relation to internal combustion engines, having for its object to provide an improved two-cycle motor of increased efficiency and durability.”

The galt gas electric car was on loan to the petersen museum

Westinghouse generator coupled to a gasoline engine

In 1914 they proudly introduced to the world the results of their labours and the Galt Gas-Electric car was born. A combination of gasoline and kerosene powered a Westinghouse generator coupled to a gasoline engine. Energy generated by the turbine was stored in batteries underneath the floor. It was said to be the world’s first hybrid car. However, the Galt car appeared 13 years after Ferdinand Porsche developed what may be the world's first gas-electric hybrid, the Semper Vivus.

Still, the Galt car, which was billed as a “coast-to-coast storage gas-electric car,” could travel 112 kilometres on a gallon of gasoline and 25 kilometres on the electric charge alone. The hybrid nature of the Galt car, at a time when auto travel was in its infancy and gas stations were few and far between, lessened the likelihood of running out of gas.

galt car came out at onset of great war

Mordue believed the challenges St. Clair and Fleming faced in 1914-1915 when they dreamed of introducing a new technology to a growing market, were just too formidable. They had seen their car into production, but they never gained critical mass to mass-produce the car. The years came and went; the Galt Motor Company seemingly came and went in the blink of an eye.

Only one known Galt Gas Electric car survives. After being loaned by the Canadian Automotive Museum to Toyota, it was then shipped off, on loan, to the world-renowned Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, where it was on display for five or six years.

What became of St. Clair and Fleming? Of Fleming’s later years we know little. By 1935 St. Clair was living in Olean, Cattaraugus, New York, where he died in September 1958. He was buried at Mount View in Galt.

In the winter of 2022, the Galt car was returned to Oshawa and is now part of a new Wires to Wheels Exhibit, which explores electric vehicles in Canada and beyond. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m to 4 p.m.

Now celebrated, the St. Clair and Moffat automobile, like a fine painting, has only gained in prestige and value in the century or more since it was first unveiled in Galt.

St. Clair’s patent on a new internal combustion engine.

McKendrick bought first car before he knew Ford

Ford went on from Galt to visit the CNE

There were a couple of the Galt Gas Electric hybrids still on the road in Galt in 1920 when Henry Ford visited his friend, MacKendrick, just down the street from the Galt Motor Car Company headquarters. But by then, the Galt auto manufacturer had ceased operations.

At the time, the CNE was the largest annual fair in the world, with world-class industrial and agricultural exhibits. Ford loved it.

Galt’s first automobile, a Ford Model C, owned by Dr. Harry MacKendrick.