“It’ll go for about four or five hours on a single charge, at about 20 to 25 miles an hour. Its range is about 110 miles, just about what most electric cars made these days will do. So we really haven’t come very far in a hundred years.

“It’s pretty fun to drive, actually — if you’re not in a hurry, that is,” he said. “Women love it.”

One does not so much enter the Baker as climb it. Once inside, it’s apparent that the designers were less intent on building a vehicle than they were in creating an ornate mobile parlor. Every surface is covered in expensive fabric or carpet, and the doors have braided cords, tassels and embroidered straps. Plump button-tucked bench seats, front and rear, face each other, as they would in the booth of a Victorian tea room. The driver sits on the left of the rear bench. If there are passengers in the front seat, the driver has to look around them to steer.

Which is not as much of a problem as one might expect, given the Baker’s lofty driving position and modest top speed of 25 miles an hour.

There is no steering wheel. At first glance there are few indications that the Baker was meant to be driven at all. A long steering tiller folds down from the left once the driver is seated; the driver pushes forward to steer left and pulls back to go right.

Speed is controlled by a lever just forward of the driver’s left elbow, and there are two brake pedals protruding from the carpet, one for each rear wheel.

On the road, the tall cabin tilts on its springs in corners, giving the sensation of driving a rubber-mounted lifeguard tower. “As you can see, we’ve come a long way in aerodynamics since 1909,” Mr. Leno said. “All the windows — the sides, the rear and the windshield — can be opened up, so you can get a nice breeze running through.”

Driving a car this rare — and this tall — makes its limited speed less of a problem in modern city traffic. Drivers of other vehicles inevitably slow to check out the Baker anyway.