The Funnies - Life's Race (1904)

Life's Auto Race

Fifth Avenue at 3:50 PM

Life Magazine, November 1904

Indy 500 - JATO

Dennis "Duke" Nalon has a name that sounds more like a superhero than a race car driver, but he sat behind the wheel of an Indy car in no less than ten races. Though his best finish was third place, Duke holds one distinction - he is (to my knowledge) the only driver to ever use a JATO rocket at the speedway.

In 1946 Duke mounted a 40 pound jet assist takeoff rocket to the rear strut of his car and, purportedly, attained a speed of 140 miles per hour on the Speedway's backstretch. It must have been something to hear when that rocket kicked in, a roar that probably shook the windows in Eagledale. In spite of the impressive speed, JATO never was a viable option at the track. For one it laid down a smoke-screen reminiscent of a James Bond thriller. Secondly, there's the pesky issue of the turns...nothing like going straight through turn three and into the middle of Georgetown Road. And lastly, you'd need to replace rockets throughout the contest making for less-than-interesting intermissions.

Duke also bears the distinction of being one of the lucky ones to get through 1949's fiery crash. A collision he survived by holding his breath and jumping out of his car while it still was moving (seen in the video below at about the 1:20 mark).

Indy 500 - What It Took in 1947

From the May 1947 issue of Popular Science, here's a glimpse at the anatomy of an Indy Car of the era. Yes, it was an era of carburetors and radiators, far from the cars that round the track these days. The Maserati mentioned in this article was the same one serviced by Cotton Henning who advised on the Hub Capp comic strip mentioned earlier this month.

Indy 500 - On the Wire (1915)

From the January 1915 issue of Popular Mechanics, a view of the wire suspension bridge that spanned the 80 foot width of the track from the pagoda to the grandstands at the start/finish line. The three-foot wide bridge was used by the flagmen and race officials during the race, an improvement from having the flagman step out onto the track itself to signal the drivers.

Indy 500 - Wilfred Bourque (1909)

Image from Indianapolis 500, A History - Volume I by Brian G. Boettcher

Wilfred (Billy) Bourque, a Canadian driver who primarily drove for the Massachusetts-based automaker, Knox, throughout his short career. He racked up wins and claimed the third race held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (actually ran on August 19, 1909. Later that same day he died in an accident during the Prest-O-Lite Trophy Race.

Some say Bourque glanced back to check on an approaching car at the prompting of his mechanic, Harry Holcomb, and others say Bourque's car lost a wheel, either way the vehicle ran into a ditch containing a drainage tile. Holcomb was ejected from the car, dying when his head struck a fence post, and sensationalist newspaper reports would say that Bourque drowned in his own blood, pinned under his car.

The end result, the AAA demanded the racing surface at Indianapolis be remade to do away with the numerous, dangerous ruts and that it be oiled and tarred for better traction. The specter of danger and death only increased the track's fame.

Indy 500 - Life's Campaign Against the Indy 500

In June of 1959, Life Magazine ran another sensationalist article decrying the Indianapolis 500 as a virtual carnival of death and destruction. It gravely waned patrons of the ever-growing death toll, pronouncing a "growing case against the race" and calling it a "Roman holiday", an apparent indictment of the 20 thousand-strong crowd that flocked to the track to witness racing's spectacle.

Life feigned quoting a 1919 issue of Motor Age, saying that magazine had stated "the cars are getting too fast", but failing to mention that the gist of that article was a call for smaller cars at the track, not the abolition of the 500 as a ghoulish blood-fest.

In 1959, when the article ran, there had been 41 race-related deaths at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That amounted to less than one death a year, a regrettable total, but hardly a bloodbath. Tilting at one of its favorite windmills, though, Life chose to make the Indy 500 out as a horrific festival of death in the American heartland, one worthy of denunciation in a national magazine.  At the same time, the magazine continued to take in revenue from ads featuring the race not to mention selling cigarettes which had been identified as a likely cause of cancer. But, we can stick to sports if we want. I don't have the statistics, but I'm sure more players had been killed playing baseball and football in the nation's gladiatorial arenas by 1959, but nothing appears on the subject in Life's pages. Then again, New York had its own football and baseball teams, it's always easier to tilt at someone else's windmill.

Indy 500 - The Haynes Speedster (1922)

Here's the first in my quest to run down info on all the automotive companies shown in the Indiana tourism ad that kicked off the racing season, we arrive at the Haynes Automotive Company of Kokomo, Indiana. I touched on Haynes before, running an ad for their Light Six, but this is the first time I've hit on their sportier cars. Haynes released its Special Speedster in 1921,  a year before this ad ran in Motor Life. It embodied what we think of when we hear the term "sports car." A two-seater aimed at the club-going, golf-playing, young man about town. The Speedster was a romantic convertible with Spanish leather interior, as the advertising says, "the car you want if you want to go 75 miles per hour."

In 1922 Howdy Wilcox, the 1919 winner of the Indy 500, proved the Haynes Speedster was more than up to the claim, attaining speeds up to 80 mph. However what's fast on the freeway isn't so on the bricks. In '22 Wilcox finished dead last, the exact same position he started. I guess it's not so great to be turning in speeds in the 80 mph range when the winner's turning in laps at 100 mph!

I did a little searching for images of the Haynes factory in Kokomo and came up with this shot of the Apperson shop from 1894. It's interesting to see the connection between the auto world and the world of horses and buggies. Back in the late 1800's, most of the companies that would eventually turn out cars were making wagons of one sort or another and it shows in the Apperson shop. Note the spoke wheels and the wagon-style leather seat in the background. You'd never know it was an automotive shop if not for the gears in the foreground.

May Full Moon: Gasoline

It's May, a time when the air is filled with birdsong, the scent of flowers, and the sound of race cars...at least here in Indianapolis. What better month to dedicate to the 1913 pop song, Gasoline? Yes, I know I usually choose a moon-related song to feature for the day of the full moon, but it's the month of the Indy 500 and concessions have to be made!

The Indy 500's first running was in 1911, just two years before Paul Pratt and J. Will Callahan's Gasoline was released. It was a time when the automobile was transitioning from noisy novelty to mainstay requirement and, if you comb through archives of old magazines, manners books, and other media, you know the attitude toward all things automotive was less than appreciative. Knowing this, it's probably not surprising the lyric takes on a cynical tone:

"Gasoline! Gasoline!

Ev'rywhere you go you smell it,

Ev'ry motor seems to yell it.

Gasoline! Gasoline!

That's the cry that echoes thro' your dreams.

Gasoline! Gasoline!

In this land of milk and honey

'Tisn't love—isn't money

Rules the world, now ain't it funny?

Gasoline! Gasoline!"

Of course, gasoline isn't the drink of choice for today's Indy cars. In fact it's been a long time since Gasoline Alley actually dispensed gasoline. Still, it seemed a good choice for the month of may. Now in June I'll get back to the usually crooning at the moon...and hopefully find a recording to put on the site too!

500 Winner - Joe Dawson (1912)

May 30, 1912 was a newsworthy day. The president giving a speech at Gettysburg, Wilbur Wright passing in Dayton, oh and a man who probably passes as a racing unknown winning the Indy 500. Joe Dawson, a native of Odin, Indiana set a speed record of 78 mph in his win - today that's a speed that will get you run down on the freeway. Dawson was the youngest winner of the 500, a record he'd hold onto until Tony Ruttman unseated him in 1952. His career was a short one, spanning only three races between 1911 and 1914. He retired after a crash in the 45th lap of the 1914 race and I wonder if the horror of high-speed fatality turned him away from racing.

The Funnies - The Remedy (1901)

An evil and the remedy.
Life Magazine, July 11, 1901

Indy 500 - Scoring the Race

Back in 1931, keeping track of the position of the cars competing in the Indianapolis 500 fell to a dedicated group of men seated in what used to be a symbol of the race, the pagoda. These photographs of the scorers and the clock they used come from the April 1931 issue of Popular Mechanics Magazine. An interesting article in that it focuses so much on the cost of racing. Probably a fact that owes to the ongoing hardship of the Great Depression.

Indy 500 - Indiana, Maker of the World's Finest Cars

I'm not sure about the romance of Indiana's automobile industry. In fact I'm pretty sure the words "industry" and "romantic" haven't ever been used in a combination that rings true. One thing is for certain, this 1904 ad from Collier's Magazine is the great granddad of the fliers, posters, and full-page ads the state's tourism board runs every May.

I'll admit it's not much of an ad to look at. All black and white with no spectacular graphics or interesting copy. Just a pedestrian blurb trying to wring a little more case from the race-going public's wallets before they headed home. For me the interest comes from the list of manufacturers at the bottom of the page. Not being a car guy, I found more than a few Indiana automakers I'd never heard of and that got me in the mood to look for them!

So, this May I'll be taking a look at some of the state's lesser-known manufactures of things which go vroom in the night (and day, I suppose). Raise the green flag on May 2015, ladies and gentlemen start your engines!

Garments for the Discerning Driver by Saks and Company

I'm taking a little detour (pun intended) from the usual Sunday automotive posts this morning. I woke up to a rainy, cool June day and while perusing the aisles of the vast internet library I came upon the 1905 Saks and Company (later to become Saks Fifth Avenue) printed a catalog specifically targeted toward the growing automobile-driving consumer. They offered pretty much anything that the turn-of-the-century motorist would need, from clothing to accessories. So, I thought we'd take a look in the Saks catalog to see what we could find!

First there's the clothing. Remember, 1905 was a time before the closed car, windshield were an option and there were no heaters to stave off the elements. If you went for a trip and it started raining, you better have rain gear, and if you were driving on a dusty, rock-strewn road, well without the right equipment you might just lose an eye or a tooth to a chunk of gravel.

For those rainy days, you might opt for this little ensemble. A rain cape (I guess we'd call it a poncho) with a  ridiculous rumpled cap. The cape is advertised as large enough to enclose the steering wheel so that it doesn't get so slick you can't steer. Ah, comfort and convenience, now that's what I like!

 I can't get over the hat. It looks like something from a Laurel and Hardy or Fatty Arbuckle comedy. As if it'd been shoved on the model's head by an exasperated camera man who was over the whole automotive craze and would have refused the Saks contract if he didn't have three kids to feed.

Now we move on to the ladies. Though the bustle had fallen out of fashion by 1905, it was the era of the "health corset" and all those floor-length, full skirts, deep-cut necklines, and hats that you see in the pieces by many of the golden age illustrators like Harrison Fisher. The women of the era couldn't go for a ride in their beau's automobile without the proper attire and Saks was ready to provide everything she needed.

So, we give you what I like to call the bubonic plague dress, because the only thing that could make a woman less attractive than this getup would be an outbreak of festering boils. The overcoat is a cross between the military coats worn by the Wicked Witch of the West's minions the Winkies and the headgear looks like it could have come right out of an episode of Buck Rogers.

I'm sure the thought here was to protect your dearest from the oil, tar, soot, and debris that typically turned a motorist's face black, but couldn't they have done it with a little more style? I mean we're not too far from cinching a burlap sack over dear old Millie's head, are we? All she really needs is "Gold Medal Flour" emblazoned across her forehead.

Well, maybe it's function over fashion in 1905. Maybe we should keep in mind that the automobile was a new piece of equipment and we hadn't quite figured out what to do with it. It was a technological advance and on the cutting edge of the technology was the automotive speed demon, the racer pushing his machine to new land-speed records. There is perhaps no other automotive profession more in need of specialized, protective garments and Saks was right there at the beginning.

The first choice for our daredevil is this great Cyberman ensemble. Yes, you too can look like your favorite stompy alien menace while pushing your Model A to the edge of human endurance. Apparently this is a French design, though I suspect that the designer may have snickered when he sold it to his stupide americain client. Perhaps the record set in France was for duping Americans when it came to fashion.

The aerodynamics of this suit don't even make sense. The broad, floppy face mask with vision-limiting goggles would either be ripped off your head, or turn sideways and blind you totally as you go into turn one. You'll notice that even in the earliest Indy 500 races nobody wore an outfit that looked anything like what Saks is offering here? Well, that's because nobody wan'ted to look like a moron while driving a race car! Can you imagine the track announcer? "Here comes the hooded wonder driving car 8 down the short shoot...what an ass."

The science fiction theme continues in my final Saks offering for the man who "would count a mile in seconds". This one looks a little like something Evil Overlord Koth's henchmen might wear while operating the dreaded moon cannon that will bring eternal night to the earth and enshrine a new era where their master will rule over all humanity. Yes, the faceless servants of evil need hard-wearing clothing to protect them from the ichors, arcane energies, and cosmic rays that are part and parcel of henchmanship. Why choose anything but the best, because who wants to be horribly disfigured or mutated on the job?

Indy 500 - Bob Sweikert

An eerie photograph from a Champion spark plug ad that aired in the March 12 issue of Life Magazine. The driver in the car at the top of the ad is Bob Sweikert. He was born in Los Angeles, California on May 20, 1926. He grew up with automobiles, working at a local Ford dealership in Hayward, CA. He would have been an airman in World War II, but a knee injury suffered during training at Lowry Field, Colorado kept him sidelined until after the end of combat. In 1945 he was honorably discharged from the Air Force.

Sweikert competed in four Indy 500 races, winning the 1955 contest and placing 6th in 1956, the year of the ad. June 17, 1956 of that same year he would be killed in a sprint car race in Salem, Indiana, a wreck that was caught on film.

Indy 500 - Carl E. Rogers Mystery

After having success in unraveling photographic mysteries, I'll admit defeat on this one. This is an image from the archives of the Indiana Historic Society of Carl E. Rogers in the R&B Special car number 20. Supposedly he was a driver in the Indy 500, however I find no evidence of him ever driving in any race. So, if anyone can provide more information, I'd appreciate it!

Indy 500 - The Mystery of #49

On one of my trawls through the internet, searching for Indy 500 imagery to share with you during race season, I came across this little gem. It's a nineteen-teens era car, obviously in sad shape, sitting in the middle of what appears to be a field, but the information that came with the information was (to say the least) sketchy. The image came from the archives of the Indiana Historical Society, usually a very reputable resource with detailed notes on the photographs in their digital archives. In this case, though, the only information available was the title "Car 49, Wrecked" and the date of the photograph listed as 1919.

Undaunted by the challenge, I started digging through the resource for all things factual - Wikipedia - and I made a discovery. There was no car number 49 in the 1919 Indy 500. From 1915 through 1919 starting position was determined by car speed during a single qualifying lap, so it is possible that the driver of number 49 wrecked during this lap, so I made a check.

Details on the 1919 race are spare, but they do exist. I can tell you that Howdy Wilcox won the 1919 race, that it was the last year for single lap qualifying, and that supposedly a band played Back Home Again in Indiana as Wilcox (a Hoosier) made his final lap thus cementing the song's association with the 500, but there is no record of there being a wreck during qualification. It seems unlikely that something as dramatic as a car wiping out would be left out of the historical record, so I'm doubting the Car 49 wrecks before qualifying scenario.

Next I decided I'd go back through history to find the first instance of a car with the number 49 participating in the 500. We know that there was no Indy 500 in 1917 and 1918 due to World War I. In 1915 and 1916 there was no number 49 in the race. In fact you have to go all the way back to 1914 to find a car number 49 involved with the Indy 500.

That car was driven by a one-time Indy driver named Ray Gilhooley. Ray drove the Isotta entry for that year's race, starting in 20th position and wrecking in lap 41 and finishing in 27th position out of 30 entries. He never led, didn't sit on the pole, and never raced in another Indy 500. Interesting note, in the article to the right (clipped from the May 1919 issue of Automotive Industry magazine) a 500 entry couldn't even be backed by a woman because "women have no standing with the contest board of the AAA).

It'd be another 15 years before another car number 49 would compete, but the 1929 entry (driven by Wesley Crawford) went out due to carburetor problems, not a wreck. There's also the small fact that by the late 20's, Indy cars looked like the Stutz Black Hawk shown at the left. Gone was the ride-along mechanic and the Beverly Hillbillies squared-off grill so definitely no match.

In the end our mystery car is Gilhooley's Isotta from the 1914 race. It's doubtful this is an image from the back straight where Gilhooley's racing career seems to have ended. Initially I thought even the infield of the track would have been better groomed than what's pictured here, but then I recognized the banked track in the background (initially it just looked like a cloud bank). The image had to have been taken on Saturday, May 30th, the day of the 4th Indy 500 documenting the final resting place of Gilhooley's number 49.

Indy 500 - Wilbur Shaw (1933)

Nice image of Wilbur Shaw and his team from the 1933 Indy 500. Shaw would finish second in 1933. Shaw would go on to win three 500 races before being killed in an airplane crash outside Decatur Indiana in 1954.

Indy 500 - Newsreel of the First Indy 500

1911 and for the first time a race was held at what would become the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. This lovely video comes from Patrick Smith's YouTube collection.

Indy 500 - The Kurtis 500M

In 1955 Indy 500 body maker Frank Kurtis designed and built his own version of a sporty roadster. The Kurtis 500M was a soft-top convertible that, according to Popular Mechanics, would top out at 125 mph and purr like a kitten in traffic. Kurtis planned on producing the 500M in Glendale, California and offering it to the public at a price of $6000,but his dream never really flowered.

Kurtis produced 22 street legal cars between 1948 and 1949 and the design gradually transformed into the Madman Muntz-Jet, which sold from 1950-1954. Kurtis made another foray into the street-legal market in 1954, with 500KK, 500S, and 500M series, all based on a version of the successful Indy 500 Roadster chassis, still only 18 roadsters were ever produced.

Proof, I guess, that success on the track doesn't always translate into success on the street. Still, the 500M is something to look at.

Indy 500 - Pyroil (Again) - 1934

Another Pyroil ad this morning, this time an earlier one. In 1934 the company wasn't claiming to have won six of the ten Indianapolis 500 races and they didn't have a dog spokesperson. My favorite is Barney Oldfield who gained fame for driving an Allis-Chalmers tractor at over 64 mph. Sounds like he was a big hit at the La Crosse county fair!

New Yorker Louis Meyer went on to be the first ever three-time Indy 500 winner, claiming the trophy as a rookie in 1928, in 1933, and in 1936 and he's credited with starting the tradition of drinking milk in the winner's circle. Meyer also was the first winner to receive a gift of the pace car, another tradition that continues to date.

Bill Cummings was an Indianapolis native who competed in nine Indy 500's, only winning in 1934. I'm not quite sure why the geniuses at the ad agency decided not to mention that he won the actual race in '34, opting instead for the brilliant statement that he won the Pyroil trophy using Pyroil. The Borg Warner trophy was commissioned in 1935 and wouldn't be presented to the winner of the 500 until the 1936 season.