Only Herly Knows: Is the Golden Flyer II Actually the Original?

Here is what we know for certain: somewhere in America right now, a 1916 Saxon roadster called the Golden Flyer II is driving state to state, carrying the message that the Equal Rights Amendment deserves its rightful place as the 28th Amendment to the Constitution.

Here is what we are less certain about: whether the car making that journey is, in some meaningful sense, the very same car that made a similar journey 110 years ago.

The only witness who might know the full truth is a floppy-eared brown rabbit named Herly. And he isn’t talking.

This is the thing about old cars: they are rarely born, they are assembled. Parts travel. Engines swap. Bodies get rebuilt from whatever is available. When Alex Huppé and Jeryl Schriever were restoring the Saxon that would become the Golden Flyer II, they sourced a significant collection of parts from a man in Connecticut — a rusty pile of Saxon components whose origins were, to put it charitably, murky.

Then came the first clue. While reupholstering the seats — pulling out rotten material, retying springs, stripping the wooden frame down to bare wood — Jeryl found something unexpected. A blob of yellow paint. Not just any yellow. The kind of yellow that would be perfectly at home on a golden Saxon roadster that had spent months driving the dusty roads of 1916 America.

Then came the second clue. Buried in a New England historical society archive — Jeryl believes it was in Vermont — she found a photograph. Black and white, badly deteriorated, taken sometime after the original Golden Flyer returned from its 1916 journey. The car in the photograph looked exhausted: banged up, written on by admirers, bearing the marks of 10,000 hard miles. But it was unmistakably a Saxon. And it was in New England.

Vermont is not far from New Hampshire. New Hampshire is where the Saxon that became the Golden Flyer II was being restored when its owner died and the car was sold. That car eventually traveled to Maine, where Jeryl’s husband Alex acquired it. Where it was rebuilt. Where those Connecticut parts — including the seat with the yellow paint — found their way into the frame.

Is it the original Golden Flyer? Probably not — entirely. Could it contain parts, panels, or even a seat that once carried Alice Burke and Nell Richardson across America? Genuinely, possibly, yes.

When Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney heard the story, she cut straight to the heart of it: “This may be the actual car.” Jeryl’s answer was more careful, and in its way more interesting: “Who knows?”

With old cars, that is often the only honest answer. They are built from journeys, not factories. They carry history in their frames the way people carry it in their bones — not as a certificate, but as something harder to name and harder to dismiss.

Herly was present at the vinyl wrapping. He watched the golden skin go on over whatever history lives in that frame. He perched in his corner of the Florida warehouse and observed the whole operation with the serene indifference that only rabbits and historians can truly manage.

He knows. He just isn’t saying.

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Original or not, the Golden Flyer II is carrying a century-old mission down the road. Join the journey!