Tycoons, Scorchers, and Outlaws

The Class War that Shaped American Auto Racing

T. Messer-Kruse

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137322517
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Amérique du Nord

Tycoons, Scorchers, and Outlaws charts how auto racing was shaped by class tensions between the millionaires who invented it, the public who resented their seizure of the public roads, and the working class drivers who viewed the sport as a vocation, not a leisured pursuit.

1

Millionaires’ Toys

Abstract: Automobiles originally appeared on American roads as the playthings of the wealthiest elite. Millionaires soon competed with each other for the bragging rights of owning the fastest imported racing car. Tycoons organized exclusive auto clubs along the lines of their yachting clubs and these organizations quickly grew beyond their initial social purposes and became both a political force and a governing body for motor sports.

Messer-Kruse, Timothy. Tycoons, Scorchers, and Outlaws: The Class War That Shaped American Auto Racing. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
DOI: 10.1057/9781137322517.0004.

The birthplace of American auto racing was not Detroit, Cleveland, or even Chicago where the first much remembered but insignificant race was held. Rather, the mania for speeding automobiles for sport originated in the little island town of Newport, Rhode Island, the “city-by-the-sea” of 22,000 residents. A seemingly unlikely place for the genesis of auto racing as the town was only about three miles from end to end. Though lacking long stretches of road it had something that proved more important in incubating a love for powerful cars—incredible wealth.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, Newport had been the favored summer destination for the very richest American families. In the early 1900s great merchants who made fortunes from trade in rum, cotton, slaves, and Chinese spices constructed mansions overlooking the picturesque harbor. They were followed by wealthy southern planters who constructed summer homes to escape the heat of the Carolinas. By the Gilded Age the old monied families such as the Astors and Belmonts built summer “cottages” alongside the nouveau riche industrialists like the Vanderbilts and Morgans. At the turn of the century, Newport was the pinnacle of elite trend setting. “Newport is the very heart of American society; as it beats, so are the smallest veins in the most distant part of America’s social anatomy furnished with their life blood.”¹

For the Newport millionaires it was not enough to have wealth but its ostentatious display was one of their distinct pleasures. Each summer the “colony” organized a carriage parade through the town streets, which provided them great opportunity to dress in their finery and drive their carriages, decorated with expensive garlands of flowers, past the hoi polloi. Over time a fashionable “arms race” developed as families vied for the most envy with the finest, the newest, or the most audacious.

For example, in 1895, Mrs. August Belmont imported an unusual French postilion turnout, an open low carriage whose driver was saddled over one of the pair of trotting horses and whose footman rode perched high upon a little seat at the rear.² The next year many such elaborate regal carriages were seen trotting up and down Bellevue Avenue. Taking the carriage competition one step further, in 1897 Oliver H. P. Belmont imported a touring car, the first automobile to roll off the ferry onto the island.

Not to be outdone, a number of other tycoons purchased expensive French machines and began calling them “automobiles” and their drivers “chauffeurs” ala Francaise. Soon the sound of sputtering engines became commonplace along Newport’s millionaires’ row. Alva Belmont (formerly Alva Vanderbilt) added a “motor carriage parade” to the Newport society calendar and hosted a party on the lawn of her Newport mansion that featured an obstacle course of dummy policemen and baby carriages with a prize going to the driver who ran over the fewest.³

According to one contemporary chronicler of Newport, the automobile craze ratcheted into high gear the year “Willie” Vanderbilt brought the first high-powered French racer to town.

William “Willie” Kissam Vanderbilt was born in New York City in 1878, the great grandson of “Commodore” Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad tycoon who famously said, “The public be damned” when asked about the discomfort of his railroad’s accommodations. “Willie” was the fourth generation of inherited wealth. His father, William Kissam Vanderbilt, was left 120 million by his own father, William H. Vanderbilt, upon his death in 1885, about the same sum William H. was bequeathed by Cornelius.⁴

Known as “Willie” throughout his life, the young Vanderbilt had a chance to ride an automobile before anyone had ever motored along an American street. When he was ten, Willie’s family toured Europe and were guests of the Count de Dion who took Willie for a spin in his steam-powered, three wheeled contraption.⁵ Willie desired speed and had the means to obtain the latest model at a time when automobiles and yachts sold for similar prices. He purchased his first car in 1899, a year after his stepfather bought his first one, and quickly traded it for a Stanley Steamer on which he earned the first of many citations for speeding—though there being no speed law the officer cited him for operating a steam boiler without an engineer’s license. As “Willie” remembered, the steamer was troublesome: “Through the blowing out of water gauges, snapping of driving chains and bursting of tires, caused many a charming old lady to lose her composure while out for an afternoon drive.” He quickly discarded it after a few runs, then imported a succession of French Mors, Panhards, and Mercedes all within a couple years.⁶

Vanderbilt dubbed his French Mors racer the “Red Devil” and gleefully raced it up and down along the ocean drive to the “open-mouthed astonishment” of the locals. Soon Willie’s young bride, his sister, Consuelo, and his cousin, Daisy Post, all were noted in the press as being pioneer automobilists, but Willie distinguished himself as the most reckless. After attempting to race a friend down a steep hill, driving backward, Willie survived one of the earliest serious accidents, losing control and rolling the open car, though miraculously escaping by landing clear of the tumbling machine on a tuffet of grass. Willie Vanderbilt (Figure 1.1), while not entrusted by his father with the running of the family business, the New York Central Railroad, wisely chose to try and make his mark in the racing world. Willie applied himself to organizing races, first through his local auto club, and then by playing an important role in founding a national organization, the American Automobile Association (AAA) in 1903.⁷

FIGURE 1.1 William “Willie” K. Vanderbilt, Jr.

While Willie seemed to have a rare streak of luck in never suffering serious injury as a result of his quest for speed, the same could not be said for many others who got in his way. Dogs, chickens, horses, and the occasional human fell before his imported wheels. One of Willie’s Newport neighbors lodged a formal complaint and Willie was summoned to the police chief’s office where he insisted he never exceeded the posted limit of ten miles per hour (a regulation largely passed to control Willie) and added that “there was not the slightest fear of accident as he could stop his machine very quickly.”⁸

Willie’s promises to the police chief were quickly forgotten as he took possession of a Daimler Mercedes that he nicknamed the “White Ghost.” A few weeks later, having just fired all the striking sailors on his yacht and replaced them with scabs, Willie spotted a trolley of the Newport to Fall River line about to descend Newport’s steepest hill, a legendary grade down Broadway Boulevard that had already provoked complaints from trolley riders of fearful speeds. Pulling alongside, Willie made eye contact with the motorman who gave a nod and threw the switch for more current and the race was on to the delight of some and terror of others on board the crowded car. The White Ghost easily outran the trolley, startling several teams of horses, one of whom tore a wheel from its wagon.⁹

Vanderbilt’s desire to monopolize public rights of way sometimes took surprisingly aggressive forms. In November of 1901, he drove to Boston to attend the annual Harvard-Yale football game. Idling his “Red Demon” in front of the Hotel Touraine, Vanderbilt’s racer straddled a set of tracks. A trolley rounded the corner and the motorman “rang his bell furiously” to warn Vanderbilt to move his vehicle but Willie K. simply “waved to the man to come no nearer . . . it looked as though there would be a collision, but the New Yorker never budged. He sat perfectly quiet and when the car [trolley] was only two feet off the angry motorman, now frightened as well, brought it to a stop.”

“ ‘Why n’t cher get outer the way?’ he bawled.”

“ ‘You should have waited,’ replied the young man quietly, ‘Now you will have to go back.’ ”¹⁰

Soon having an automobile was not enough to be truly fashionable; one had to have the most powerful automobile. “There is no question but that the sport of racing automobiles, which, luckily, perhaps, only those gifted with plenty of worldly goods can patronize, is one approaching in danger any yet recorded in the annals of recreative amusements. Newport, R.I., the summer home of so many New York millionaires, has been a mecca for the horseless carriage this season and no stable at that popular resort has been considered complete wi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction
• 1 Millionaires’ Toys
• 2 Scorcher Rule
• 3 Seizing the Open Road
• 4 Man or Machine?
• 5 Outlaws
• Index