I'm not an expert in turn-of-the-century automobiles, but my father is -- probably one of the foremost in the country -- and I've grown up around them all my li

I'm not an expert in turn-of-the-century automobiles, but my father is -- probably one of the foremost in the country -- and I've grown up around them all my life. So, I'm quite certain that's not an 1889 anything. The first dead giveaway is the wire wheels -- they're earlier than late-20's model A wires, but look similar to Buffalo wires in the earlier 20s. I would guess that there's just no way that the wheels are earlier than 1917, at best. In 1889, almost all available automobiles had derivatives of carriage wheels. They were usually wood, with a thin, uninflated hard rubber "tire". (Remember, paved roads didn't really exist yet.) The tiller steering would be correct for a turn-of-the-century car, but the body is just not. Cars of that era weren't fully enclosed shiny sheet metal ordeals; they still closely resembled carriages, built mostly out of wood and hand-forged steel, with seats on leaf springs and a small motor box. There were electric cars in 1889, but this wasn't one of them.