Cybertruck, look out! This is a battery-powered vehicle that most of us can get behind. This would be a really fun project as a lot of us are finally past the worst months of winter and may be thinking of getting the golf clubs out. The seller has this 1950s Victor Electra-Car battery-powered golf cart listed here as a Barn Finds classified. It’s located in one of my top-ten areas on the globe: Rapid City, South Dakota, and they’re asking $800 or best offer.
There isn’t much information on Victor golf carts on the internet at all. Thanks, Al Gore. I was hoping to run across many articles, advertisements, forums, and a wide range of things. Nope. There is a vintage brochure for sale on eBay but the photos are mostly tiny and can’t be enlarged other than the opening page, which is a poem written by a gentleman named Edgar A. Guest titled: Golfing Paul Revere. “Listen my children and you shall hear, about a modern Paul Revere. And how a good friend gave to me, a golf-cart ride from tee to tee.” It goes on, but you get the drift.
The poem is about the Victor “Electra-Car Golfer”, a battery-powered three-wheeled golf cart similar to this one for sale in Rapid. Speaking of this golf cart, it’s located at an auto museum there and has been inside at the museum for 30 years! The bigger question is that out of the dozens and dozens of times I’ve been to Rapid City over the last 50 years, how have I not heard about the Motion Unlimited Museum?! The seller says it’s all original and it’s been stored inside its whole life. In case you were wondering, yes, the two golf bags and clubs are included.
Powered golf carts have been around since the 1930s and they were noisy, smoky, smelly, and LOUD, having small gas engines. That doesn’t work too well on a golf course where whispering rules the day. World War II and gas rationing put an end to gas-powered golf carts, at least temporarily, and is when battery-powered golf carts started to appear in bigger numbers than just an oddity here or there. There isn’t much info on the Victor Adding Machine Company’s foray into making golf carts that I could find, but this example would already be in one of my storage units if I didn’t have to pay for shipping from western SoDak. Have any of you heard of Victor Golf Carts, or owned a vintage battery-powered golf cart?
According to an old brochure, this cart is most likely a Golfer Model 23 and it should have a two-wheel differential rear drive system, a lifetime lubricated motor, forward and reverse controls, a hinged battery deck, and positive braking with an in-line brake rod. Its condition looks good, with a few chips here and there and it needs batteries, of course, after so many decades of sitting in this museum. Victor made a few models but info is rarer than a hole-in-one and if anybody has more info on this company or their golf carts, please let us know in the comments. FORE!
30 years ago I worked at a place that had a 3 – wheel Harley Davidson electric golf cart.
Scotty, I have indeed learned about the Motion Unlimited museum in Rapid City. I used to follow them by way of The Auto Trader and Hemmings Motor News. I’d marvel at
all the really neat stuff they had for sale back then. I used the pictures
they provided to make some of the
auto art prints I sold 20 years ago to
pay for a trip to the eye doctor back
home in Illinois. Had to do it because
my eye condition is so rare that no
doctor here in Florida can treat it. It was one of their cars, a ’55 Pontiac
ambulance, that I drew, painted, and
sold for $100 in 2004. Wound up making more than enough to cover the trip and a new pair of custom made specs too. As for the cart, $800 is a fair price. I’d update the
charging system, add re-gen braking,
lights, turn signals, a windshield, a
canopy to hold a solar panel, and call
it a day. Oops! Forgot about the 2 12
volt bike generators (One at each rear
wheel) to power the lights and turn
signals for night time driving. Say,
what do I have to do to sell my prints
on BF?
First, I strongly suggest you become a member. The site has a classified section, that I hadn’t seen in a while, and looks impressive, members apparently can post ads for free( never knew that), and the membership helps keep the site going.
https://barnfinds.com/sell/
Okay, apparently, any link, even their own, sends the comment to Hades. I said, before my comment was rudely “moderated”, 1st become a member, I think classified are free to members.
I needs a cup/can holder!
Another from the “SG vault”, as it were. He wasn’t kidding, not much info, although, why would there be? Golf carts were always H-D, or maybe a Cushman, but I’m sure there were many. While the electric are more user friendly, the gas ones really did run backwards for reverse. Before ATVs, old golf carts adorned many a farm setting. Saved a lot of steps. I never cared for golf myself, seemed a bit silly to me, but a cart does make it more enjoyable, especially if it starts to rain. Nothing like being on a golf course in a thunderstorm.
Keep ’em coming staff!
Back in the mid-1970s I worked in the truck shop for support equipment in the factory, fork trucks etc. our “service truck was a 3 wheeled former golf cart that had been heavily modified with equipment to service broken down fork trucks etc. including a electric fork truck motor to drive the rear wheels, it would “do a wheelee anytime and carry that front wheel several yards until you “chickened out”. It looked similar to that pic.
Many years ago I learned from experience that three-wheeled golf cars could tip over if you turned too quickly.
I used to work at a little 9-hole golf course when I was in Jr High. They had one electric cart and one gas powered HD 3-wheeler. Fully charged, the electric one would haul ass. But, that old HD while note as fast as the other one fully charged, was consistently “fast enough” without worrying about running out of power out on the course! and while I never rolled the HD, i did have it up on two wheels a few times and once got it stuck in a wet spot! It did have a little torque and i just kept spinning the wheels. Golf pro was not too pleased!! Ha! I loved the HD, but always wished it had a steering wheel vs the “rudder” bar thing!! Ah, what fun being 13, huh??
As a new entrant to the workforce – in the Stagflation Seventies, I did three summers on a golf course. I was a year-round employee, actually, of the city that owned the course; but winters I tossed trash. The pro and superintendent liked me, so they would transfer me to the golf course from March to November.
The Harley-Davidson golf carts date to 1960. FWIW, designing them, that twenty-year design, was Willy G’s first successful task with the Motor Company. We had gas and electric both; and by the late 1970s, the technology was pretty stale.
That, of course, was new-parent AMF’s doing – product neglect and bleeding their subsidiaries, was how they rolled. The H-D cart was a dead letter by 1980 – the buyout didn’t include the golf-cart design, which was sold to another maker and converted to four wheel layout. The first order of Yamaha gas golf carts we got were eye openers, quiet, powerful, no need to get battery carts, the pro said.
I left shortly thereafter, but I do remember some of the history.
In a back barn, we had about eight older examples, 1950s golf cars. The barn wasn’t abandoned – we kept some tools and lawn-care stuff in there; the carts were dusty but looked after. They showed why the H-D model was so popular. Heavy…kludgy…awkward 1950s styling, the Cushman models done up to look like pedal-cars.
Hadn’t heard of a Victor. We had Cushman and EZGo models, and a few I’ve forgotten.
But we, the grounds crew, never used the carts for our work. We had three Cushman Turf Truckster stepside pickups…THOSE were a hoot.
They will roll, too. Ask me how I know. Even so…I’d love to have a Truckster, today.
After working on and fixing up my 5 garden tractors(’71 Bolens,’72 Cub Cadet 108,’89 Wheel Horse 312-8,’94 Ford LS-25,’98 craftsman 18hp twin) My next project is my 1966 Harley Davidson 3 wheeler golf cart,putting a chopper front end,and dropping in my 2003 sportster engine making a street legal handicap trike