The automobile identified by photographer Albert E. Schaaf on the support verso of Early Motoring in France is the Pope Toledo. At the time this photograph was taken, the artist was the general manager for the Pope Motor Car Company,  (1.) and accompanied a team from the manufacturer to France in June, 1905. There, in the south of the country, Pope automobiles had a go on the early motorcar racing circuit. The following is some interesting background on the automobile which appeared in an advertisement and motoring journal.

This may be the Type VIII Pope Toledo. In 1905, the automobile appeared in an advertisement for the company in The Saturday Evening Post: The “Toledo” in Paris. Ad copy, underneath a halftone photograph showing the car:

From an actual photograph of Type VIII, Pope-Toledo, 30 H.P.  Price $3500.  Gen. Horace Porter and Secretary in Tonneau. Taken in front of the home of Count and Countess Bonne de Castellane, Paris, France, January, 1905. “COLONEL POPE, in speaking of automobiles, said recently in a characteristic speech: “Buy whatever automobile suits your fancy best. I shall insist that my factories build Pope Automobiles as we have ALWAYS built bicycles – so GOOD that your own judgment is bound to make your selection a car with the word POPE on the name plate.” If you invest $2,800 or more in an automobile, insist on DOUBLE DIRECT CHAIN DRIVE…(ad continues)

In June, the same month this photograph was taken in a French village, the Pope-Toledo automobile racing team was taking part in an early race on the Gordon Bennett course outside Clermont-Ferrand in the south of France. The publication The Automobile reported the following for their July 6, 1905 issue. An excerpt:  

Over the 1905 Gordon Bennett Course 

CLERMONT FERRAND, June 14. Herbert Lyttle hooted viciously outside the hotel, for it was 6:30 a.m., or just fifteen minutes past the time appointed for the start of a survey of the Gordon Bennett course. Dingley jumped up beside him, the car doors were banged, and the 30-horsepower Pope-Toledo touring automobile rushed up the steep hill leading to the course. On board, in addition to the two American drivers, are C. B. Myers, of the Diamond Rubber Co., the interpreter for the Pope team, and the representative of THE AUTOMOBILE. The course has been entirely closed to racing cars for the last fortnight, and the American drivers, who arrived too late to become thoroughly acquainted with the circuit before this prefectorial decision was taken, have now to be content with daily practice over the circuit in their touring car, running the racers only on a quiet stretch of road  town. Lyttle has only been round the course three times in the racer, and Dingley was on his third round when the accident occurred at Rochefort the day before the final closing of the circuit, as reported at the time. (pp. 1-2)

The Pope-Toledo was the luxury marque of the Pope Motor Car Company founded by Colonel Albert A. Pope, and was a manufacturer of Brass Era automobiles in Toledo, Ohio between 1903 and 1909. The Pope-Toledo was the successor to the Toledo of the International Motor Car Company. – Wikipedia (2024)

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Mr. Schaaf was well known for his photography. His home-oil pictures hang in salons all over the world. Recently the Smithsonian Institution requested some of his old pictures. Two sons survive. – The New York Times– obituary excerpt, June 9, 1950

Albert Ernest Schaaf: 1866-1950

Amateur photographer and Cleveland industrialist Albert E. Schaaf, a business executive in bicycle and automobile manufacturing in his early career, became the founder and eventual chairman of the board of the Air-Maze Corporation in 1925, a manufacturer of air and liquid filters that became a pioneer in their development across a wide range of uses. Vintage Works, LTD. website states: “Schaaf became photographically active in the teens and 1920s. He was known to work in alternative processes, including gum prints, oil prints, bromoils and bromoil transfers.”

1. The Marion (Ohio) Daily Mirror reported in the issue for November 12, 1907 issue: Toledo, Nov. 12.—Albert E. Schaaf, who has been manager of the Toledo factory of the Pope Motor Car Co., for a number of years, has been requested to resign by Albert L. Pope, one of the receivers of all the Pope factories. Harold Pope is now in charge, Schaaf’s management of the plant has been entirely satisfactory, yet the receiver has informed him that he is no longer wanted in a managerial capacity by the Popes.