Page:Motoring Magazine and Motor Life December 1913.djvu/11

 December, 1913.

��MOTORING MAGAZINE AND MOTOR LIFE

��':W^^m^^m)^m^y^>'

��>^y««« «i < m i

�� ��6(ST

��it.

�� ��Where are the racing cars of yester- day? If a staid, sober old age hasn't engulfed them, most probably they have ended their last lap a twisted heap of steel and wood.

From the idol of a wildly cheering, speed mad crowd to respectable daily labor; a serene domestic life, or a mildly exciting private career, is but a step in the racing game, and one by one these speed demons of the days gone by have slipped behind the portals of the yester- days, have slowed down and allowed the newer and more powerful cars to pass them.

What has become of Casey Jones, Black Bess, the Peerless Green Dragon, the Cyclone, Whistling Billy, Reo Bird, Ford 999, and a score of other fast trav- elers?

To the "four winds" for many; daily grind for some; for others a more or less speedy career under private tutelage; ob- livion for the balance.

With a flaming gasoline torch throwing smoky shadows on a score of upturned faces, Casey Jones, the trim gray Loco- mobile, winner of the twenty-four hour race at Ascot Park, began its downward career as demonstrating car for an ad- vertising dentist.

Night after night poor old Casey drew up to the curb with a defiant snort, and soon a crowd of curious people gathered about. Not drawn because of the gray car that had won a well-fought race in the past, but attracted there by the gaudy red plush dentist's chair; the metallic bark of the advertiser; the licking flames of the torch. In some small hamlet in Southern California to-night, when dusk purples the shadows, you will find old Casey Jones still pursuing its new career at the will of the painless one.

Like ashes scattered to the wild winds, nothing tangible remains of Reo Bird, the little racer that, at one time, held all the middleweight records. It was broken up and its parts put back into stock years ago. Because of the two Reo engines which the Bird sported, this car was widely discussed. It was raced in all parts of the East by Bruno Siebel and Charles Bigelow.

��"Whistling Billy," the notorious White Steamer that Bert Dingley drove in 1906, is to-day. as Dingley says, "just scrap."

Billy the Whistler was some high stepper, if all the stories of his past are to be believed. After turning over with Webb Jay a couple of times, Dingley broke it up a few times more to sort of settle it, but it refused to become "bridle wise." After being put in first-class shape at the factory, Whistling Billy made a beautiful ascension with Gus Sie- fried, at Ascot Park. Just why, nobody knows, but Billy struck his nose into the track, and made three beautiful somer- saults, and there wasn't enough left of the Whistler to rebuild.

In Barney Oldfield's past there have been many unusual racers (autos, of course) associated, for Barney has hit some high places in his time, but his little Ford 999 had perhaps the most interest- ing finish of any of his string.

Named by Earl Kiser, the driver whose leg was torn off by Oldfield's Winton Bullet six years ago, the little yellow car met its first real accident when the 999 and a car known as the Red Devil, were both wrecked in Milwaukee in 1903, Driver Frank Day being killed outright. Soon after. Ford 999, which was the first racer Oldfield ever drove, and the first car to make a mile in less than a minute on a dirt track, was rebuilt and sold to Bill Pickens, Oldfield's manager, who shipped it to Los Angeles. Because of the condition of the car, Pickens refused to accept it, and it was held by the South- ern Pacific for some time, and at last sold for the freight and storage charges to Dana Burks, former Mayor of Ocean Park. Burks tried to race it at the open- ing of the Motordrome, but Ford 999 had run its last successful race; there wasn't a go left in it.

Oldfield's Green Dragon was one of the racers to land right. The Peerless Green Dragon was the only one of his cars that he says he hated to sell.

It was back in 1905 that Barney sold the emerald-hued car that every automo- bile fan in the country knew, to George Clark, of New York City. The follow- ing year Oldfield, on a visit to the little

��old town, saw his Green Dragon, serenely purring in front of one of the fashionable shops in Fifth avenue.

A second seat had been added, and the exhausts had been covered, but to Barney it was the same old car. As he gazed at his old sweetheart, feeling as though he would like to get in and drive away, a good-looking female person waltzed out of the shop and hustled to the car. Dressed in green from slippers to hat, she was something of a Peerless green fairy herself. Barney says the last im- pression he had of his car was a pair of snappy black eyes and yards and yards of green veiling floating out behind the auto as the green racer with its old-time falsetto bark beat it up Fifth avenue.

There was a dark-haired girl mixed up with one of Tetzlaff's ex-racers also — that is, there was one he is willing to tell of. The Fiat he drove in the 1911 Phoe- nix race as far as the San Diego tele- graph pole, into which he smashed early in the game, was rebuilt and used later as a demonstrating car. The pretty daughter of a Kansas farmer fell in love with the car (as Teddy demonstrated it), so the big Fiat was shipped back where they grow com and good-looking girls. Home life for this racer.

The Toledo steamer, which Charles Soules piloted to victory in the first 100- miles endurance race ever held over what is now the Vanderbilt course, caught fire and was completely destroyed at Bir- mingham, Ala., in 1902.

Soules said he averaged fifteen miles an hour in that 100-mile race, and every- body was delighted with the speed. Af- ter such a record, it would seem as if no place would be too warm for the Toledo steamer.

Eddie Maier sort of makes a specialty of driving ex-racing cars, and in his stable is Big Ben, Oldfield's mighty Steams, as well as a number of other machines.

Frank A. Garbutt, vice-president of the Los Angeles Athletic Club, numbers the Nazzaro car in his auto stable. This is one of the few ex-racing cars whose life has fallen into pleasant lines. The big red Fiat looks as strong and bright as

�� �