History Auto racing 1894-1942

I think he was a little to deep into the cooking sherry......

 

Vit,

I hope you enjoyed a pain au chocolat washed down with a tea after your little dig this morning? I had to settle for a typical Aussie breakfast during my search of Australian publications. I did however add some posh with a milky coffee. I think you call it a latte.

On a serious note, most of what is written in the French paper regarding Mr. Stapp's projectile is also mentioned in The Canberra Times-29th March 1932. It also state's the three Jupiter engines have a power output of 800hp each with a 60hp unit in front.

Stapp says that everything is Frenci. "I built the car myself. Theoretically, it is capable of 312 to 370 miles an hour but i must make more tests on the La Baule sands before going to Daytona in May to attempt the world's record"

In another article he test's the car in the presence of two French journalists without much success, achieving a speed of only 80mph. He later conducted another test on the St. Germain-Paris highway when the fireball occured.

So, after reading this i think you're correct in saying the car never did make it to Daytona. The assumptions of noboD and TH are probably right too.

 

furb

Here's mine...... fould it in a junk shop in Munich.... $15.00 then

Silverplated but nice

I'll find the Celuloid letter opener and post it later

I gotta a lot of this junk to unpack

 

Here's the letter opener

 

Bizarre that all the Aussie papers picked up a piece from the Daily Express! Perhaps they were hoping to nudge Wizard Smith back into action? The Australian National Library wouldn't have been the first place I'd have looked though! There's also a piece in the Straits Times of April 28th 1932 which gives a few more details of it - published two days after it had burned out!

I did find a report of the crash in The Times too, almost certainly copied from l'Ouest-Éclair, as it includes details like the fact that they were both strapped in, which was the reason they found it hard to escape. It also specifically mentions that the engines were Gnome-Rhônes! OTOH they thought he was Belgian, an error repeated in the New York Times! L'Ouest-Éclair also reported in some detail on the first run at La Baule, which took place on April 20th, achieving about 160km/h.

Where did you find this report about a fire on the St-Germain-Paris road? Could this have referred to car "Number 1"?

Incidentally, if you look at La Baule on Google Maps, you'll find that the sands he was using are in an enormous curved bay. I don't know how far the tide goes out there, but I wonder if a really long straight run on firm sand would be possible. When they ran the 1938 Grand Prix there they used a simple 5km each way circuit with hairpins at each end, but the sand cut up so badly that they had to move the course every ten laps!

 

It's nothing more than what i have already mentioned but here it is anyway.

www.sportscars.tv/Newfiles/recordatt.html

*note: This link should work.

 

Thanks. Found it. Correct link is http://www.sportscars.tv/Newfiles/recordatt.html

I believe Fraichard was working for l'Intransigeant at the time. Gallica have been promising to digitise that paper for years ...

It seems nobody has yet written the whole story of this monstre.

 

Speaking of which,

Has anyone translated any of the French papers? It takes me the better part of a day to read just a few pages.

 

In a word - non! French I can cope with quite easily, German reasonably although I struggle with Fraktur text. I knew O-level German and A-level French would come in useful one day. With a bit of effort, guesswork, dictionaries and online translators I can manage Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and Romanian too. Even Polish, Hungarian and Czech at a pinch. For Finnish and Swedish I ask Leif Snellman! But I draw the line at anything Cyrillic ... although there's a wonderful set of reports on the 1939 Belgrade race in a Yugoslav paper called Politika!

 

A photo of a couple of stripped roadsters about ready to race at the Utah State Fair circa 1910, the car on the left is a Packard.

 

A nice photo from the 1913 indy 500. The Pope Hartford of Howdy Wilcox and Frank Fox with a Duesenberg right behind it.

 

What about Austrian?

Over the years i have tried to find information about the 1908 Bosnian Trial held on the outskirts of Sarajevo. I have searched all available Bosnian and Croatian papers without any success. There is a paragraph or two that can be found on the Skoda website, a small mention in the biography of Otto Hieronimus and a search of Laurin & Klement also has snippets of the company's early history. One competitor of note was the Croatian Count Paul Draskovich {Pavao Draskovic} but there is no mention of his auto racing exploits in the Croatian archives. I wonder if there is any mention in the Austrian papers as the area where the hillclimb was staged probably came under the jurisdiction of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Any help would be appreciated if you know of the event.

BTW, Poltika! is a Serbian paper. ..And Yugoslav is a language that does not exist.

 

Nice photo.

That place was always packed full of spectators.
I searched the papers of Utah sometime ago and came across an advertisment in The Ogden Standard of 1909 for 40 days of racing at the State Fairgrounds. "Six High Class Races Daily - Rain or Shine" it said.
I never have been able to find any other information to this though.

 

Google traslate works wonders instantly on any URL or cut and paste.

It messes up sometimes but you can work thru almost anything

Here I use it daily ......

 

No Duesenbergs in 1913... it's a Mason.

 

I believe Richard (Vitesse) was refering to a 1939 article, when the country Yugoslavia still existed, so this was a reference to the location of the paper, not its language.

 

Thanks for the great research Vitesse, more loco than an ALCO. Shirley Lois Moongirl would have made a nice match.



I noticed in this link ( http://www.sportscars.tv/Newfiles/recordatt.html ) the writer refers to this car as the Wogglebug



and not Louis Ross's Lightning Bug

 

You pushed it around the floor at eye level?

 

If the Bosnian Trial you refer to is the "Internationale Gesellschaftsfahrt durch Bosnien, Herzegowina, Dalmatien und Montenegro" then it took place between May 3rd and 20th 1908. More than 20 starters, of whom 8 received finishers' Plaketten. There was also what looks to have been a timed hillclimb as part of it on the "Iwanpass", which seems to be a German name for the route between Ljubinista and Stenje near Lake Prespa on what is today the border of Macedonia and Albania.

Info from Braunbeck's Sport-Lexikon. That any help?

edit: Braunbeck seems to have got the date wrong. There's a full report in the Austrian Allgemeine Auto Zeitung, issue dated May 10th 1908.

http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?apm=0&aid=aaz&zoom=2

 

Crystal Palace 1935......

 

Michael...I think it would be more constructive for this thread in the long run if you would share something interesting with us other than your overly corrective nature.

 

This car is a complete mystery. I am waiting for a reply email from a friend who might be able to help run the plate, which appears to be 1910 Minnesota. The format is similar to dealer and manufacturer plates in Massachusetts at that time. We might get lucky and learn from the plate whose car it was and the make. Can any eagle eye tell what make it is?

 

Teddie Tetzlaff, 1910 at Santa Monica examining his Lozier after as they used to say...turning turtle.

 

Thanks for the answer! Much appreciated!!


Howard
East Hills, NY

 

Thanks Richard. I appreciate the effort you put in.
Now i have to translate all of the unreadable German.

The info i have shows 11 competitors and only 5 of those entered the hillclimb event that was held somewhere near the Ivan Planina{Ivan Pass}. This is a mountain that lies south of Sarajevo and near Mostar in Herzegovina but is not anywhere near Macedonia or Albania. Maybe there is a mistake or two in the article of the Austrian paper.

 

well, how else would you shoot it? (it was up on a table, i was shooting Illford Delta 50 speed b+w in my 2.8f Rolleiflex on a tripod. most of these shots are almost 1 second exposure.)

 

http://translate.googleusercontent....&twu=1&usg=ALkJrhjnndTWvxGv0BrGw0Xmze7AuSNCxQ

 

Thanks Bluto.
I already tried but it won't translate.

 

Sorry I just noticed it's a pdf

You can copy from the PDF and save text then paste to Goggles translate box

Be sure you have it set to 'German to English'

Hope that helps

 

An upside Ford V-60 in a midget racer from Colorado...... Read all about this unique piece of ingenuity it at the SAH website .......

http://www.autohistory.org/feature_1.html