In Europe, the Chicago-Evanston run caused nary a ripple. Fifty-four miles, no matter the conditions, was not considered a serious competition. In races that mattered, France had firmly established itself as the center of both auto racing and automotive technology, and so it intended to continue. Shortly after the Paris-Bordeaux event, Count de Dion and his fellows formed the Automobile Club de France, and the club’s charter included organizing ever more competitive races—as long as French cars won—and taking whatever other steps were necessary to keep the French auto industry preeminent. City-to-city racing had gripped the imagination of the French public, as well as almost everyone else, so the club’s first venture was to sponsor an event from Paris to Marseille and back, the first of its kind to officially be termed “Grand Prix.”
The race began on September 24, 1896, and was divided into ten stages, five in each direction, the same format as would be adopted by the Tour de France bicycle race when it began in 1903. More than forty cars of every description—steam, gasoline, two-seat, four-seat, three-wheel, four-wheel, and even some categorized as “bicycles”—were entered, but Levassor, who had received more notoriety as a victim of injustice than he would have as a declared winner, was considered the favorite.
For the first four stages, Levassor did not disappoint. With his usual panache, he roared into the lead and seemed likely to stay there until, just outside Avignon, he swerved to avoid a dog in the road and crashed.*5 He was jarred but not, it seemed, seriously injured. Nonetheless, he was sufficiently shaken to turn the driving over to Charles d’Hostingue, who ultimately finished fourth. Panhard-Levassors also finished in first and second place.
Levassor was persuaded by race officials to be examined at a local hospital. There he was diagnosed with a concussion from which he was expected to quickly recover. He did not. Six months later, on April 14, 1897, Émile Levassor died, leaving behind a design that dominated racing for decades, and automaking in general for a century.
Death in Grand Prix racing, however, has never dissuaded public fancy. The Paris-Marseille affair inspired a spate of imitators across Europe. Germany, Belgium, and Italy all held road races. Even the British finally got into the act, repealing the Red Flag Act. Within weeks, a race was staged from London to Brighton.
Alexander Winton on a racetrack
But the center of the automobile universe remained France. In 1899, the Tour de France covered more than 1,000 miles, won by a Panhard that averaged 32 miles per hour. With road racing becoming virtually a national sport, the French public demanded an even grander event. But automobile performance seemed to be butting up against the limits of technology. To maintain its unquestioned superiority, ACF members cast about for some splashy new way to hold an auto race. Gordon Bennett, who had long since lamented the laggard progress of America’s automobile industry, decided to give it to them—and in the process spur American automaking.*6
In May of that year, Alexander Winton had challenged Fernand Charron, then France’s premier driver, to a match race. He offered to put up 20,000 francs to ensure Charron’s participation, if the Frenchman would do likewise. When Bennett heard of the challenge, he decided this was the opportunity he had been looking for. He offered to handle logistics, to act as intermediary, and to hold the stakes. He also assured Charron that regular dispatches would be sent around the world trumpeting the intrepid American’s challenge of Europe’s best.
Charron, who had won a Paris-Amsterdam-Paris run the previous year and a Paris-Bordeaux race just weeks before, agreed, assuming that Winton would travel to France, where automobilism was far more advanced. Bennett kept his word about publicity—the planned Charron-Winton race received regular newspaper coverage as far away as Australia. Charron deposited his 20,000 francs with Bennett, and Winton deposited an equal sum with a newspaper in New York, but not the Herald. Then Winton balked. In the first place, he said, he had planned on the race being staged in the United States, and in the second, his 20,000-franc offer was not meant to be a bet but was simply security against his not showing up.
The Frenchman took umbrage, as did Bennett. He was quoted in the Herald as saying, “I am very much surprised at the turn the proposed international automobile match has taken. It promised at the start to be a serious affair, but apparently it has stopped off suddenly.”11 Bennett issued a dispatch complaining that the race was “in a bad way” since “Winton declines to back up his challenge by any sort of bet, were it even a dollar.” Bennett then dismissed Winton’s challenge as a “humbug.”
Charron then issued a counterproposal. Feeling “discouraged,” he told the Herald, “I shall do my best to extricate Mr. Winton from his dilemma. Now I offer to pay his expenses up to the sum of 5,000 francs to come over here, and I will lay 50,000 francs against his 20,000 francs that I will beat him on any route he may choose in France from 500 kilometers to 1,000 kilometers.”12 Winton was to post his money, this time with Bennett, “as an ordinary sporting transaction.” Charron made the 2½-to-1 offer because he had “such confidence in the good qualities of the French automobile.”
The article then quoted Charron as adding a challenge that almost certainly came from Bennett himself. “New York newspapers which have taken up the interests of Mr. Winton so much in this matter will surely find money enough through their readers, among whom will be found persons who have confidence enough in Mr. Winton, and who will complete the sum in his behalf. The whole sum should be placed with the Herald, where my forfeit now lies, and where I shall pay in the stakes.” It is also likely that Charron’s stake was put up by Bennett, so the Frenchman never put up a franc of his own money.
But Winton again refused to cross the Atlantic. He claimed to be committed to a series of endurance runs in the United States, including the one from Cleveland to New York in May, after which he had deposited his good-faith money for the Charron race.*7 Charron, who had never been to America and spoke no English, then agreed to a race from New York to Chicago, to be held in August, the first major cross-country event ever held in the United States. The next day he decided against it, prompting one newspaper to observe, “If MM. Charron and Winton do not cease expending wind about that automobile race, there will not be enough left for their tires.”13
But the wind did not cease. At one point Charron demanded the wager be 100,000 francs, lending even more credence to the likelihood that Bennett was the actual source of funds. Even Thomas Edison, who announced his own intention to build a car that would “cost less than a team of horses,” joined the debate, predicting a rousing defeat for Charron because French automobiles were used to driving on roads as “flat as billiard tables.”
In the end, the race never came off. As reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, “The Winton-Charron motor-car match has been declared off owing to the stakes not being large enough to tempt Charron over to America….Although an American paper offered Charron £250 expenses if he would go across and meet Winton, who offered to put up a side wager of £800, Charron has held out for larger stakes which, not being forthcoming, will put an end to what would have proved an exceedingly interesting international contest.”14
Bennett, a man accustomed to getting anything he wanted, was furious, but it did not take him long to come up with an even better idea, something far more auspicious than a match race. Although various manufacturers such as Panhard et Levassor often functioned as de facto teams, auto racing was officially an individual sport, the disadvantages of which had been accented all too acutely in the Charron-Winton fiasco. Bennett would correct all that and introduce national pride in the bargain by sponsoring an event in which automobiles would race under their nations’ flags. To prevent any one nation—France—from overwhelming the others, a maximum of three vehicles from any one country would be allowed. Finally, to ensure that spectators knew which nations’ entries were winning, each country’s cars would be painted in one of their national colors. The French would get their first choice, blue, the Belgians yellow, the Americans
red, and Germany white.*8 As a final inducement, the nation whose driver claimed victory in what promised to be a wildly popular and highly lucrative event would choose the venue for the following year’s race.*9
Bennett presented his idea to the ACF, which, after grumbling a bit about restricting France to three cars, agreed to organize the race. Bennett volunteered to donate the cup that would be presented to the winner. While the official name for the race was the Coupe Internationale, it quickly became known by the name of the trophy, the Coupe Gordon Bennett. To avoid subjective judging, another of Bennett’s requirements was a strict set of specifications. Automobiles must be constructed entirely in the nation under whose flag they raced and must weigh more than 882 pounds. (A 2,200-pound maximum weight was added in 1902.) Each car must carry two riders who weighed at least 168 pounds each or ballast would be added to make up the difference. The initial Gordon Bennett Cup thus became the world’s first modern automobile race.
And only for modern automobiles. The sort of Rube Goldberg–type machines that had filed for entry in Chicago would have been laughed off the course in Europe. For Americans, that meant only superior technology—and superior finances—could qualify an owner as a participant. “If horse racing is the sport of kings,” Automobile magazine observed, “then motor races must be the sport of millionaires.”15
France soon announced its three-car team. Each of the French cars would be a Panhard with a vertical, 27-horsepower, two-cylinder motor encased in aluminum alloy, an arrangement that had demonstrated remarkable performance and durability. They were, however, stupendously noisy, even by the volcanic standards of the day, with an explosion followed by a vibrating metallic ring every three to four seconds. One of these detonations on wheels would be driven by Fernand Charron. Belgium announced that it would match France’s three entries, and Germany entered a single Benz.
For a sport “in its infancy on this side of the Atlantic,” Automobile added, the competition for Gordon Bennett’s “international challenge cup…has been entered into…with a zest which promises the best of sport for all concerned.” By that the magazine meant that the United States had entered with two cars, both Wintons, one to be driven by Winton himself, who had agreed—to Bennett’s surprise and Charron’s anticipation—to come to Europe for the event.
The course had been set from Paris to Lyon, a distance of more than 350 miles over public roads, which the public, the organizers knew, would not always leave to the automobiles. As the date of the race approached—June 14, 1900—problems began to surface. None of the Belgian cars had arrived (only one would), and one of the Wintons was forced to withdraw because of mechanical issues. Soon afterward, the German entry, which was to be driven by Karl Benz’s son, Eugen, also withdrew. Then the Belgian car that did arrive had French tires, which prompted a protest that was quickly dismissed. No one wanted a match race between the Panhards, which were expected to do well, and the remaining Winton, which wasn’t.
European opinion of the American entry proved correct. Seventy-five miles out, Winton broke a wheel and bent an axle, and he was forced to abandon the race. A bit farther on, one of the Panhards dropped out with transmission trouble, and the last of the Belgian cars retired after colliding with perhaps a half dozen dogs. That left only the two remaining Panhards to complete the course.
Charron finished first despite, with 10 miles to go, “coming into collision with a big dog, with the result that the main spring of the autocar was broken. He finished by holding the spring with his hand.”16 Léonce Girardot, in the other Panhard, came in more than ninety minutes later, because he had run off the road trying to avoid a team of horses and lost more than an hour waiting while a blacksmith made repairs to a bent wheel.
Horseless Age, which was desperately trying to spur American automaking, tried to mask its disappointment at Winton’s feeble showing by injecting a bit of xenophobia. “The race was less international than its name would imply, three of the five participants starting being French, so that, granting equal value to each of the racers, and applying the theory of probability, we should have reached the conclusion that France had greater chance of winning than of losing the cup race.”17 The article did not bother to mention that the French would have been favored even had they been forced to run on three wheels.
Charron’s impressive closing sprint notwithstanding, with only two cars completing the course, as in the Chicago run in the United States, the race might have seemed a failure. There was little reporting in American newspapers, except the Herald, of course, and Automobile magazine, while charitably calling the race “tremendously exciting,” also proclaimed it “a disappointment.”18
But Bennett, like Kohlstaat, had touched something in both the drivers and the citizenry at large. Traveling 350 miles over often uneven, unpaved roads—not at all suitable for billiard tables—Charron had averaged almost 39 miles per hour, a remarkable achievement. In addition, the thought of national pride being tested on the open road by this remarkable new invention created a clamor that someone with Bennett’s acute ear for publicity could hardly miss. By the time the next Gordon Bennett Cup race was run, it was one of the most eagerly awaited events in the world.
But the significance of Bennett’s brainchild was more profound. For all the resistance that would still be encountered at the widespread use of this cacophonous, smoke-belching machine, the Paris-Lyon Coupe Internationale had somehow managed to be a turning point. Suddenly, the thought of what might be achieved infused designers and drivers with excitement, and fascinated the public. Automobiles remained impractical as vehicles for the common man, but the question now was simply for how long. The spark had been set; it awaited the right man to kindle it to flame.
* * *
*1 Bennett is buried at the Cimetière de Passy, where auto pioneer Marcel Renault and auto-racer-turned-aviator Henri Farman were also laid to rest. Avenue Gordon Bennett currently borders Stade Roland Garros (named for another famed French aviator, killed during World War I), site of tennis’s French Open.
*2 At one point, a New York employee showed up at his door. When Bennett demanded to know what he was doing there, the employee told Bennett that he had summoned him. “Well, go home,” Bennett said; having little choice, the man did.
*3 Two years later, Louis Blériot would develop the first practical acetylene car lamp, the “Phare Blériot,” which would make him a fortune and allow him to turn his attention to his real passion, aviation. On July 25, 1909, Blériot became the first man to fly an airplane across the English Channel.
*4 Rearview mirrors would not be introduced until 1911, during the first running of the Indianapolis 500, when Ray Haroun, driving solo, mounted one on his racer.
*5 Levassor would not be the only racer to crash trying to avoid a canine, but it would be well more than a decade before barriers would be placed along racecourses to prevent both animals and humans from wandering out in front of the race cars.
*6 Bennett’s view of the Chicago race matched that of his adopted countrymen.
*7 In that jaunt, which Winton completed in a record-setting forty-seven hours, a reporter accompanying him referred to his vehicle as an “automobile.” The name stuck and eventually all others faded away.
*8 With red, white, and blue gone, the British, who did not participate until the following year, were forced to settle for green. British drivers groused, but over the years British racing green became one of the sport’s most popular colors.
*9 When Bennett switched to balloon racing in 1906 and then added fixed-wing airplane competition in 1909, he abandoned the national team contest but continued the practice of holding the ensuing year’s race in the country that the winner claimed as his own.
CHAPTER 9
Few men have exhibited a more instinctive feel for the nuances of public mood than Henry Ford. Although he had finally put himself into the position to manufacture automobiles, he realized he must pursue a different path, albeit with his investors’ mo
ney. He would not yet build the cheapest, most reliable car; consumers were not ready for that. For now, he would build the fastest.
Much later, he claimed to have embraced racing only under protest. “When it was found that an automobile really could go and several makers started to put out cars,” he wrote in My Life and Work, “the immediate query was as to which would go fastest. It was a curious but natural development—that racing idea. I never thought anything of racing, but the public refused to consider the automobile in any light other than as a fast toy. Therefore later we had to race. The industry was held back by this initial racing slant, for the attention of the makers was diverted to making fast rather than good cars. It was a business for speculators.”1
In 1899, Ford, still an Edison employee, accepted the overtures of a group of those speculators and allowed them to organize the Detroit Automobile Company. The corporation was capitalized at $150,000, 10 percent of that paid in, with a dozen investors, including Mayor Maybury and a local lumber baron, William Murphy. Ford was granted a small amount of stock and a salary of $150 per week as “chief engineer.” He was also given modern, well-equipped shop space on Cass Avenue to produce his marvels. Although this was the first corporation set up in Detroit specifically for the manufacture of automobiles, these were hardly the only men with a dream who had been swept up in the horseless carriage rage. As with many of history’s great technological shifts—movable type, aviation, electronic data processing—scores if not hundreds of would-be tycoons were applying their varying degrees of talent in the rush to innovation. “All over the country small towns were being treated to volcanic eruptions of frightened horses when some local inventor rattled through Main Street in a noisy ‘horseless’ at the head of a trail of black smoke.”2 Less than two weeks after he agreed to be part of the new venture, Ford was offered the job of general manager of Detroit Illuminating. Instead, he quit.
Drive!: Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age Page 10
