The mechanical breakthrough, which led to the building of La Marquise, was a new boiler design. The vertical boiler was much shorter and consisted of concentric rings, rather like Russian dolls. The two engines beneath the floor drove close-set back wheels via locomotive cranks. Water was carried in a tank under the seat, coke or coal in a square bunker surrounding the boiler. Coke was withdrawn via drawers at the bottom and poured down a pipe in the center of the boiler onto the fire beneath.

Driving “La Marquise,” Bouton participated in the first motor car race in 1887, (he was the only car to show up) averaging 16 mph for the 20 miles from Paris to Versailles and back and hitting 37 mph on the straights, according to an observer who timed him. The next year, De Dion in “La Marquise” beat Bouton on a three-wheeler, at an average of 18 mph.

De Dion produced sales brochures as early as 1886, with illustrations of a steam phaeton, dog-cart, truck, carriage and even an 18-seat bus (this when Benz and Daimler were still struggling with primitive three-wheelers). By 1889 you could buy a tricycle for 2,800 francs ($540) and a quadricycle for 4,400 francs ($850).

Those prices were certainly out of the reach for the average enthusiast, when a French laborer might make five francs a day, and sales were confined to the very rich. As a result, only about 30 De Dion steamers were made: 20 tricycles, four or five quadricycles, and a few larger carts and carriages, according to the world’s first automobile magazine La France Automobile in 1894. Two quadricycles remain and six tricycles are known, but none of those are operable.

By 1893 gasoline was the up-and-coming power source, and steam devotee Trepardoux left the firm and presumably went back to toys. A celebrated duelist and ladies’ man, De Dion was keen on animal welfare and made a few large steam trucks in an effort to free horses from hauling heavy carts, and then he and Bouton focused on gasoline automobiles. They patented their transmission in 1895 and dominated the early years of the 20th century, with De Dion engines powering some of the first great marques, like Renault, Pierce-Arrow and Delage. There were 88 De Dion Bouton cars in the London-to-Brighton Centennial run in 1996 – the largest single make.

“La Marquise” was built in De Dion’s new factory across the River Seine in the Rue de Pavillons at Puteaux, to which the company moved in 1884, when it outgrew its original premises. “We could employ as many men as we liked –12-15 and sometimes even 20,” boasted De Dion.

The new steamer seated four people in pairs and back-to-back “dos-a-dos” as it was known. The seats were located on top of the steel tank, which held 40 gallons of water, good for about 20 miles. The vertical boiler was ahead of the driver and surrounded by a bunker, which kept the fire fed with coal or coke through hoppers at the bottom, eliminating the need for stoking. A manual pump supplied water to the boiler initially, and when pressure was up to the operating level of 170 psi, donkey engines began working and water was supplied automatically.

Later in life De Dion declared that “La Marquise” “can be considered the embryo of the first touring automobile. It had four seats and it was already a family car.”

Count De Dion kept “La Marquise” until 1906, finally selling it to French army officer Henri Doriol. The Doriol family owned it for 81 years but never had it running, since it had lost brass and copper fittings to the war effort in 1914. Doriol displayed “La Marquise” at the Grand Exhibition at Grenoble, Switzerland in 1925 and was awarded a special Diplome d’Honneur.

Doriol and his son attempted to restore the quadricycle in later years but finally gave up and put it up for auction at a Poulain sale in Paris in 1987. Incomplete and non-running, it was bought by Tim Moore, a British Veteran Car Club Member. Another museum at Le Mans in France had an 1890 model, so Moore went to work copying the missing pieces on his car and had it running inside a year. Despite being a steam novice, he recreated the rear foot platform and wooden seat bottom, remanufactured brass fittings and pipes that had been sacrificed to the 1914 war effort, and re-tubed the boiler in 1993 at a cost of $20,000. He also replaced incorrect wooden, iron-tired wheels with correct spoked wheels and hard rubber tires.