Drive!: Henry Ford, George Selden, and the Race to Invent the Auto Age

by Lawrence Goldstone

  For the winner, Willie ordered a silver loving cup—the Vanderbilt Cup—which was wrought to the standards of the man for whom it was named. Three feet tall, fashioned from 30 pounds of sterling silver mounted on an ebony base, the 10.5-gallon cup was embossed with an image of Willie K. at the wheel of his Mercedes, setting the speed record at Ormond Beach.

  By June, Willie K. was finally resigned to the route he had chosen not being approved, so—reluctantly and with some irritation—he shortened the course to a 30-mile triangle, which would be traversed ten times, thus preserving the 300-mile distance. The roads on the triangle were almost entirely in Nassau County, just east of the New York City line, but one corner spilled over into Queens, where Jericho Turnpike met the newly constructed Hempstead Turnpike. The shortest leg was north-south Route 107, running between Massapequa and Hicksville. The shape of the course left three severe turns for drivers to negotiate, but a straighter run was out of the question. Nassau County was then largely agricultural, and farmers in particular were none too keen on the automobile, which spooked their horses and terrified their livestock. In fact, after the Nassau County board of supervisors finally, on August 23, approved the closing of the appropriate public roads, a series of legal actions were filed that threatened the October 8 start date until just days before the event was to take place. As it was, the organizers were forced to create “control stations” at Hicksville and Hempstead, where the cars would stop to be inspected during each lap, then be escorted by bicycles over railroad tracks. The time in the control stations would be deducted from a driver’s total and not count in average miles per hour, a provision that would prove a good deal more controversial than it first appeared.4

  Local officials were vehement in defending their decision to allow the race. They insisted a slew of dollars would be raked in from the thousands of spectators who were expected to witness the event—and they were right. More than fifty thousand visitors arrived, filling every hotel and inn, many of which charged “Waldorf-Astoria prices” for the privilege of a bed and a roof. The luxurious Garden City Hotel, located almost in the center of the triangle—the very same hotel in which Louis Mooers had been registered before his arrest during the Gordon Bennett trials—was forced to turn away guests who, in calmer moments, would have been treated like royalty. That this deluge of humanity, most of whom had never witnessed an automobile race, might well create precisely the conditions that had doomed Paris-Madrid was pointed out by only a few malcontents.

  If Willie Vanderbilt had been correct about the interest his spectacle would engender among Americans who had never seen such an exhibition, he was equally correct about the enthusiasm of drivers and manufacturers to compete in it. Eighteen cars would race, numbered 1 to 19—there was no 13—with Panhard, Mercedes, De Dietrich, Fiat, Renault, and Clement-Bayard represented.*3 The drivers were an equally impressive lot, the best-known being Paris-Madrid winner Fernand Gabriel, Albert Clement, and George Heath, who had been tearing up the European circuit. Heath had been born only miles away in Astoria, New York, but had lived most of his life in Europe, and at forty-two was the oldest racer. He captained the three-car Panhard team. The six French cars ranged from 60 horsepower for the Renault to 90 for the Panhards. The two Fiats were also 90 horsepower, and four of the five Mercedes cars featured 60 horsepower, with the other a 90-horsepower machine. The Mercedes racers were all privately owned by Americans, some of whom would drive their cars in the race.

  By contrast, the five American cars—except for the 75-horsepower Simplex and a 70-horsepower Pope-Toledo—seemed vastly underpowered. A Royal Tourist generated 35 horsepower, a Packard just 30, and another Pope-Toledo an impossibly skimpy 24. While the race received enormous national publicity from late summer on—another reason the courts would have been reluctant to enjoin its running—no one gave the Americans much of a chance.

  In terms of stimulating interest in American automobiles, however, the apparent overmatch had little effect. In its August edition, Cycle and Automobile Trade Journal observed, “Now that the Vanderbilt Cup race is to be held in the United States, there is no doubt but that American makers will give more attention to the building of racing cars; in fact, several new claimants for racing honors have already appeared, and there is a chance that America may figure in future races for the James Gordon Bennett….As we have repeatedly asserted, America can only hope to win in international races through experience gained in similar races.”5 As both Vanderbilt and Gordon Bennett knew from watching the French, the Germans, the Italians, and even the come-lately British, building more competitive racing cars unfailingly led to building more efficient and reliable commercial vehicles.

  More publicity was generated on October 3, five days before the start, when Herbert Lytle, who would later be described as one of the most daring race car drivers in the country—a euphemism for “reckless”—crashed the 24-horsepower Pope-Toledo during a practice lap. Lytle was unhurt, flung forward over a picket fence, as was H. C. Anderson, a mechanician riding on one of the running boards. But Harold Rigby, another mechanician, riding on the other board, was thrown between the fence and the 2,000-pound automobile, his chest crushed. As the result of what Motor Age termed “a peculiar accident,” Rigby died at 3:00 A.M. in a local hospital from a punctured lung.

  Rumors began to swirl about that the accident had been caused when the car, traveling at high speed, encountered a farmer who “would not yield a bit of the road and forced Lytle to dash into the fence.” The organizers moved quickly to debunk this account. “They were going not faster than 20 miles an hour….Lytle had passed the farmer, and a furlong or less further on, the steering knuckle broke.” Lytle was not about to be dissuaded by the death of a teammate. “The car can easily be repaired. Lytle will drive it in the race.”6

  The controversy faded almost as quickly as it had arisen. As in Europe, the specter of death had only increased the fervor of the public.

  On race day, the start time for the first car, a red Mercedes driven by Albert Campbell, was set for 6:00 A.M., avoiding the middle-of-the-night start of Paris-Madrid, but still early enough to ensure that all eighteen cars would finish in daylight. Neither the Long Island Railroad nor local police considered the impact of tens of thousands of eager race fans jamming the train station—only one ticket booth would be open the day before the race—the trains themselves, the woefully inadequate roads for those arriving by automobile, and even public toilet facilities, of which there were few.

  For the wealthy, of course, the experience was somewhat different. As they had at Paris-Madrid, the well-to-do “treated the race like any other society outing, bringing along their servants and setting up camp kitchens behind the grandstand. Breakfast was served on china plates at 7:00 A.M., one hour into the race. A second informal repast was arranged for 9:00. Throughout the morning, coffee, bottled beer, mineral water, and Scotch whiskey were delivered to the well-heeled spectators by their liveried staff.”7 As Motor Age noted, “The grand stand when the race was fully under way contained almost as notable a representation of wealth and fashion as ever graces the golden horse-shoe of the Metropolitan on opera night.”8

  For the remainder of the horde of visitors, however, it was a raucous scene, with revelers drinking, carousing, and making life generally miserable for residents, except those residents with something to sell. Hay wagons doubled as taxis, and farmers’ parlors served as way stations, all at outrageous prices. The owners of the two roadhouses along the two-mile route from the train station to the racecourse stayed up all night preparing food and drink, and were so mobbed that they sold out before sunrise. It was as if, The New York Times observed, “Nassau County had been invaded.”9

  But a swarming bevy of fans exuded frenzied anticipation as well, a mood that was absorbed by the plethora of newspapermen sent to cover America’s first international road race. Willie Vanderbilt had been hoping for the sort of coverage that attends only the most important sporting or society events, and t
hat was what he got. The race would have everything—speed, suspense, the closest finish ever in a major automobile event, and another death.

  Albert Clement takes a turn

  The cars went off at two-minute intervals, each with a roar that both deafened and intoxicated the thousands of spectators jammed together at the start/finish line. When the last of the racers had departed, William Wallace in one of the Fiats, the eerie silence at first prompted an odd disorientation and then curiosity among the onlookers. Mimicking the observers at Paris-Madrid and other road races, some began leaning forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the first car to complete a lap, and then, when others did the same, wandering onto the course for a clearer line of sight. When the first car did come into view, Fernand Gabriel in the De Dietrich, the crowd was shooed back to their seats, only to pour back onto the course when the big racer had passed.

  One-third of the racers were out by the end of the second lap, five with mechanical problems and one because of a crash. Tobacco heir George Arents, an amateur who had not felt the need for a practice run, blew a front tire on his Mercedes while speeding at perhaps 90 miles per hour on a straightaway. “Anxious to stop the car quickly, so as to lose as little time as possible in replacing the damaged tire, Mr. Arents applied the brakes suddenly and so strongly that the left rear wheel was completely wrecked, every spoke breaking off short. The vehicle wheeled about sharply and overturned in the centre of the road. Mr. Arents, who was at the wheel, was thrown clear of the machine and landed head first upon the macadamized roadway.”10

  Arents suffered severe head injuries from which he was not expected to recover, but after two weeks in the hospital, he ultimately survived. Carl Mensel, his riding mechanic, however, “was caught underneath the overturned machine and received a fracture of the skull and probably internal injuries as well, from which he subsequently died.” Although newspapers the next day reported that the fatality “cast a pall over the grandstand,” news of Mensel’s death was not made public until well after the race ended, and other reports provided firm evidence that the holiday spirit in the grandstand was undiminished.

  After Arents and Mensel were removed to Nassau Hospital, the Mercedes was quickly hauled from the track—by a team of horses—and the other racers continued on. Georges Teste, in a Panhard, forged ahead with a 71-mile-per-hour lap, the fastest of the race, a lead he held until he was forced out with either a cracked cylinder or a failed clutch. (It was the nature of early automobiles that the precise reason for breakdowns was often a matter of speculation.) The next two laps claimed another Mercedes and the 70-horsepower Pope-Toledo.

  In the meantime, George Heath and Albert Clement were staging a classic duel. Heath, proclaimed across the United States as “the American,” although he would remain in Europe for virtually the rest of his life, took the lead after Teste’s Panhard dropped out. Unlike his teammate, he drove at a steadier pace, attempting to maintain both his position and the well-being of his automobile.

  That strategy seemed ill-conceived when, in the eighth lap, he blew a tire; while he repaired the damage, Albert Clement—the “Boy Racer,” only twenty-one years old and the son of the car’s designer—sped past him into the lead. Heath’s prospects diminished further when, as he took the road with a new tire, he was told he was still first and drove conservatively to avoid additional damage. (Heath, like most of the racers, had begun the race with two spares. He had blown a tire earlier, so if another one failed, he would have no means to replace it.)

  Clement, in his “long, rakish, blue car,” continued to hold the lead as the ninth lap concluded. Only his “ears and the tip of his nose were visible from the thick folds of his automobile hood, and the car was emitting a tremendous amount of smoke and gasoline odor, showing that the motor was working to do its best out on the course.”11

  Each time he passed the grandstand, thousands cheered wildly, prompted from an unexpected quarter. “Enthusiasm was beginning to make itself felt by the time the hours wore on past noon and the race narrowed down to Heath and Clement. Mrs. W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr. was the main factor in it. Nothing could suppress her delight in the proceedings. She led the applause; she led the cheers; she jumped up on a camp chair and waved anything that came handy whenever a racer came by.”

  It was not until he was about to begin his final lap that Heath realized he was running second. He had no choice but to let his 90-horsepower machine out full, aware that running at top speed would greatly increase the chance of breakdown. But the Panhard held together and Heath crossed the finish line at 1:08:45 in the afternoon. He had averaged 52 miles per hour for the 284 miles of the course, control station segments deducted from the total driven. The spectators crowded onto the track in front of the grandstand, peering up the road for signs of Clement. Mrs. Vanderbilt, “still standing on the chair, pulled her watch out, bent over, and looked up the road, calculating the time.” Clement had started ten minutes after Heath, so, assuming similar time at the control stations, he had to beat that margin at the finish line.

  He did not. After final calculations, Heath was declared the winner by a mere 1 minute 28 seconds, by far the smallest margin of victory ever in a road race. Clement was livid, chasing after Willie Vanderbilt, who was also the referee, complaining that he had been excessively detained at one of the control stations. A news photo shows him, face black from oil and dirt, yelling at Willie K., who is staring stolidly straight ahead, goggles perched on the brim of his cap. Clement’s protest was denied.

  After Clement’s arrival at the finish line, spectators poured onto the course, and Vanderbilt and AAA officials decided to halt the race to prevent accidents. The order of finish from three on down would be determined by the position of the remaining cars when the race was halted. The good news for Willie Vanderbilt had not ended. Herbert Lytle’s 24-horsepower Pope-Toledo was in third place and the Packard in fourth. Two American cars had finished ahead of Mercedes, De Dietrich, Fiat, and Renault.

  The Vanderbilt Cup race became the most widely and enthusiastically reported automobile story in American history, surpassing even the cross-country jaunts of the year before. In the evening editions of October 8 newspapers, or morning editions of those published the next day, a Sunday, it garnered front-page headlines from New York to California, with most of the features accompanied by gaudy descriptions of the race and the racers, and copious numbers of photographs.

  For example, the Richmond, Virginia, Times Dispatch led with a four-column headline, “Heath Gets Vanderbilt Cup. Driver Killed, Owner Dying.”*4 The Washington Times trumpeted across two columns, “Records Fall Before Winner of Auto Race.” Similar headlines appeared in the West, in such newspapers as The Spokane Press and the San Francisco Call. Perhaps the most lurid was in the St. Paul Globe, which featured two front-page stories. One read, “Death Sits Behind Arents’ Chauffeur in Mad Race,” and the other, “Vanderbilt Cup Is Baptized in Blood.”

  The New York newspapers had both the most extensive and the most exuberant coverage. The New York World devoted four pages to “The Great Race”; across two of them lay the headline “Speed-Mad Automobilists Dash Along Today in Deadly Race.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle’s opening paragraph told the story of the race precisely as Willie Vanderbilt would have wanted: “A blur of dusty gray streaked past the judges’ stand on Jericho Turnpike this afternoon, and a Long Island boy on a French machine had won the most thrilling race the modern world has ever seen. It was a finish that stilled heart beats and held thousands breathless.”12

  Even the staid New York Times could not resist the allure of sensationalism. After a lead column story on page one, the Times devoted all of pages two and three to the contest. Its opening paragraph almost matched the Daily Eagle’s in rapture and outdid it in verbiage. “When, with a deep rumble growing into a roar and terminating in a whizz, Heath, the American, in his 90-horsepower Panhard machine, at 1:08:45 o’clock yesterday afternoon flashed across the finish line of the 284-mile course of the interna
tional automobile race at Westbury, L.I., the cheer that the well-groomed crowd on the grand stand let out marked the first real excitement of the great contest for W. K. Vanderbilt, Jr.’s cup.”

  Not everyone was so taken, of course. Among the naysayers, none was more strident than an editorial writer in that same edition of The New York Times. Taking issue with his own paper’s news coverage, and epitomizing a point of view rooted in the past and about to be swept aside in an avalanche of auto sales, he bristled:

  The race was utterly futile, proving nothing of interest and value to any one concerned in promoting “sport” or the mechanical development of the practical and useful motor vehicle—unless it be that the type of road locomotive capable of making high speed is an overorganized piece of machinery, too complex and too frail to be of any use for the pleasure of normal persons or the benefit of humanity….[R]oads suited for speeding them do not exist and their employment on common highways is an outrage upon everything moving which cannot go as fast as they do or may not want to go in the same direction.13

  He then demonstrated an equally profound ignorance of human nature.

  The worst enemies of the automobile are those who are making it odious in abusing public patience by misusing highways to the inconvenience and danger of others. A road race such as that in Nassau County, L.I., will encourage gross violations of law everywhere and create a popular antagonism to the automobile and those who use it which will not be overcome in a long time.