The Pete Kreis story Part five 1932 to his death and beyond

 

The Pete Kreis story

Part five 

1932 to his death and beyond

The photo from the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection shows Pete Kreis, left shaking hands with Henry Ford in 1932

Following the 1931 Indianapolis 500-mile race, at Cliff Durant’s direction, Tommy Milton sold the ‘Detroit Special’ (last raced by Kreis in 1929) to Harry Hartz, who had metalsmith Phil Summers build a two-man body. Hartz installed a 182- cubic inch straight-8 Miller engine in the chassis and entered ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ in the 1932 International 500-Mile Sweepstakes.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Eddie Rickenbacker’s dream of automaker involvement under the “junk formula” came true in 1932 with the Studebaker factory’s five entries. A year earlier, prolific Indianapolis race car builder Herman Rigling built one car for Ab Jenkins and Studebaker chief engineer George Hunt that used a Studebaker Commander straight-eight engine, transmission and axles. 

Although it crashed out on lap 167, the car performed well enough in the 1931 ‘500,’ that the Studebaker Corporation hired Rigling to build four copies for the 1932 ‘500.’

The factory supplied the 336 cubic-inch, L-head, 8-cylinder Studebaker President engines, 3-speed manual transmissions,  front and rear axles, brakes and steering components. Rigling built the chassis and Pop Dreyer built the two-man bodies. 

Hunt designed an intake manifold fitted with four Studebaker single-throat carburetors, supplemented with an aftermarket exhaust manifold and magneto which boosted engine output from 110 to 175 horsepower. 

The driver lineup for the Studebaker team included Tony Gulotta, the 1931 driver, Luther Johnson, Zeke Myer, Cliff Bergere and Albert Jacob “Pete” Kreis. The cars were each painted in a different Studebaker President passenger car color – silver, black, blue, red and green. 

Even before the big track opened for practice, on Sunday May 1 the team ran a test led by manager and Chief Engineer George Hunt. Gulotta and Johnson drove a combined 660 miles in one of the team cars reportedly at an average speed of 102.6 MPH “exclusive of the pit stops” per the Indianapolis News. 

Peter Kreis is his Studebaker for the 1932 '500' at the right of this photo of the team courtesy of the IUPUI University Library Center for Digital Studies Indianapolis Motor Speedway Collection

Four of the Studebaker team cars qualified on the first day of time trials, Saturday May 21 and Bergere led the team in qualifying as the #22 averaged 111.503 MPH to start tenth. Cliff just edged his teammate Luther Johnson’s four-lap run of 111.218 MPH which placed the #46 Studebaker eleventh.  Kreis in the #18 wound up seventeenth fastest at 110.270 MPH while Gulotta posted a 108.896 MPH average and would start twentieth. 

Zeke Meyer in the final Studebaker Corporation entry, qualified on the eighth and final day of times trials, on Saturday May 28th and ran ten laps at an average speed of 110.745 MPH to start 38th in the 40-car starting field.     

On Decoration Day Monday May 30 1932, it initially appeared that it would be another runaway by Billy Arnold and Matlock in ‘Miller-Hartz 1’ as they took the lead of lap 2 and proceeded to lap the field. 

However, in an eerie repeat of the previous year, Arnold and Matlock crashed in turn three on their 59th lap after the car slid in oil while they lapped Pete Kreis’ car and hit the wall injuring both driver and mechanic  for the second year in a row. This time Matlock suffered a broken pelvis while Arnold broke his collar bone, but Arnold never raced again, reportedly at the urging of his wife.  

After a mid-race 36-lap duel with Wilbur Shaw, Fred Frame in ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ took command on the 153rd lap and led the rest of the way.  Frame, with riding mechanic Jerry Houck  won the 1932 ‘500’ by a lap over Howdy Wilcox II with a new record average speed of 104.144 MPH despite the necessity for six pit stops to add water to the radiator for the overheated Miller engine. 

Three of the Studebaker entries finished the 1932 ‘500’. Bergere and his riding mechanic Vern Lake led the Studebaker team with a third place finish in the red #22 only four minutes behind winner Frame. 

Meyer (unrelated to fellow driver Louis)  and Walter Mitchell finished sixth in their green #37 with an average speed of 98.476 MPH, and Gulotta and his mechanic Carl Riscigno scored a 13th place finish in the silver #25 flagged with 184 laps completed; they were positioned for a good finish but lost considerable time when a tire blew in turn one late in the race. 

The two Studebaker entries that failed to finish were both the victims of crashes. On lap 164, Luther Johnson’s black #46 Studebaker with Billy Mallar alongside lost a wheel on the main straightaway. Kreis lost control of the blue Studebaker #18 on the main straightaway on lap 178 and crashed in turn one in front of the ‘E’ grandstand. Pete and his riding mechanic Aaron B. Vance, an Indianapolis resident, finished 15th, one spot better than Johnson.

Four nights later, all the Studebaker team members, including the pit crew, were honored in a testimonial dinner held in the Studebaker Corporation Administration Building in South Bend Indiana.  Prize monies were awarded and top Studebaker officials took turns praising the team. The South Bend Tribune reported the comments of Paul Hoffman vice president of sales “the biggest tribute I can pay them is to say that they performed even more credibly than expected.”

On June 22^nd, Kreis and Vance were back at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway “making an experimental run,” (Firestone tire tests) when a tire blew out and the car reportedly “went over the retaining wall” in the third turn.  Details were sketchy, just that Kreis’ injuries “are not serious,” as reported by the Knoxville News-Sentinel while the Indianapolis Star reported both men suffered broken ribs, cuts and bruises.

Later in the summer of 1932, Pete took part in the Studebaker traveling auto show that stopped at Studebaker dealerships across the state of Pennsylvania. Pete appeared with one of the Studebaker Indianapolis cars and gave a brief talk about his racing experiences. 

In one appearance in Altoona, newspaper advertisements claimed Pete would drive the race car through noon day traffic while he wore a blindfold and black hood.

One night after Christmas 1932, Pete had another close call when his Chrysler coupe plunged off Topside Road near Knoxville, caught fire and burned to the ground but Pete received no injuries. 

For the 1933 race, the AAA Contest Board instituted a new rule that limited fuel tanks to 15 gallons and a limit of six gallons of oil used during the race. 

Following his success in the 1932 ‘500,’ winning driver Fred Frame went on a spending spree. Frame bought the “Miller-Hartz 1” (crashed by Arnold in 1931 and 1932) and rechristened it as the “Frame-Miller.”

Frame also bought a four-cylinder Miller 220-cubic inch powered Duesenberg 122 chassis built in 1930 and entered in the 1933 Indianapolis ‘500,’ while he continued to drive “Miller-Hartz 2” for Harry Hartz in 1933.  

Hartz nominated 1932 AAA Pacific Southwest Big Car championship runner-up mustachioed rookie driver Lester “Les” Spangler for his second entry, a rear-drive four-cylinder Miller 255 cubic inch-powered Miller chassis. Hartz purchased this car, the 303-cubic inch DOHC Miller V-16 powered machine from Bill White, shortened the chassis and in place of the V-16 installed one of the first Miller 255 cubic inch engines.

When the official Indianapolis entry list closed on May 1, 1933 Frame had nominated Pete Kreis as the driver of the front-drive Frame-Miller, while Paul Bost would pilot the Duesenberg. On May 3 the Knoxville New-Sentinel reported that Pete Kreis left Knoxville for Indianapolis. 

As he departed Knoxville Kreis told the reporter “I believe I will have my best chance to win this time.” Upon arrival in Indianapolis Kreis found that his car had not arrived, and Pete, a scratch golfer wiled away his time with Bill Heinlein on the Speedway golf course according to the Indianapolis News.

On Saturday May 20 1933, Pete Kreis, on his second attempt, qualified the gray and blue trimmed #2 machine at an average speed 114.370 MPH for his 10-lap 25-mile time trial run which slotted him eleventh in the 42-car starting field on Decoration Day.  Pete had aborted his first attempt earlier in the day after nine laps were completed due to a tire problem.   

A driver protest delayed the start of the 1933 International 500-mile Sweepstakes. Speedway physician DR.  H R Allen disqualified sixth-fastest qualifier Howdy Wilcox II due his diabetic condition (reported as epilepsy). The other 41 drivers protested and refused to start the race and presented a petition signed by all 41 drivers that demanded that Wilcox be allowed to race.

Dr. Allen refused to allow Wilcox to compete, and the drivers remained unmoved even after AAA steward Eddie Edenburn’s impassioned speech.  Finally, after more than an hour’s delay, Speedway officials pushed Wilcox’s ‘Gilmore Special’ off the grid and Edenburn ordered Mauri Rose to start the car from the tail of the field.        

With the first thirty laps completed, Kreis with mechanic Charles Marant rode in seventh place in ‘Miller Hartz 1’, one lap behind leader Bill Cummings, but Pete retired on lap 63 with a broken universal joint in the left front wheel. 22 laps later, his car owner Frame joined Pete on the sidelines as his Miller-Hartz broke a timing gear.

On lap 132, the Hartz second car, the cream and red #14 tangled with Malcom Fox’s semi-stock Studebaker and rolled onto the wall in turn two. Several hours later both driver Spangler and riding mechanic Glenn "Monk" Jordan died of their injuries, the fifth and sixth victims of crashes at the Speedway in May 1933.  Louis Meyer led 71 laps to win his second Indianapolis 500-mile race.

Eighteen days later, on June 17^th 1933, Kreis and his friend and instructor Charles “Sonny” Rising took off from Island Airport near downtown Knoxville, but the engine in Kreis’ Waco biplane quit on takeoff. The plane stalled from a height of 300 feet, grazed a tree and crashed into the Tennessee River upside down.

Kreis, despite his injured right eye, arm and shoulder and the loss of the tip of the middle finger on his right hand, pulled the unconscious Rising from the wreckage and saved “Sonny” from drowning. After their rescue, both men were admitted to Howard-Henderson Hospital, with Pete released a week after the accident to convalesce at home.

After five deaths at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1933, for the 1934 International 500-mile Sweepstakes, the AAA instituted a limit of 45 gallons of fuel and six gallons of oil per car for the 500 miles to slow the cars down. The teams were allotted three gallons of gasoline to qualify, estimated at 12 laps for a time trial run; one lap to get up to speed, the ten timed laps and one cool-off lap.

Just before he left for Indianapolis, Pete took delivery of his new car, a 1934 Ford Model 40 (V8-powered) 3-window coupe from the Vester Motor Company located on Main Street in Knoxville.

Hartz entered his car number 14 without a driver named and when Harry and the front drive Miller- Hartz 2 (the 1932 ‘500’ winner) arrived at the Speedway on Sunday May 13 Indianapolis Star reporter W F Sturm quizzed Hartz as to possible drivers.  Hartz mentioned rumors of Billy Arnold, and Sturm reported that when asked about Pete’s desire to drive the car, Hartz stated that Kreis had not a said anything to him about it.

Three days later, Hartz had still not named a driver but on Wednesday May 23 Sturm reported that Kreis will “probably drive the Hartz car.” On Thursday May 24^th Hartz announced that Kreis would take his first laps on the morning Friday May 25 and qualify later that day. Lengthy practice would not be needed as the reader will recall that Pete a veteran at the Speedway, drove the ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ chassis in 1926 powered by a supercharged 91-cubic inch Miller-powered engine and in 1929 as the two-stage supercharged “Detroit Special.”

It was later reported that at 7:40 AM on Friday May 25, Kreis and fellow driver Cliff Bergere stopped at the corner of Michigan Street and White River Parkway while they were enroute to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and lent aid in a fatal passenger car accident until the ambulance arrived.  

Just after 9 AM, the 34-year veteran Tennessee racer headed onto the track to take his first practice laps for 1934. Reportedly, Kreis and his riding mechanic Bob Hahn turned several slow warm-up laps, then ran several laps at approximately 90 MPH before Pete picked up the throttle for a flat-out lap.  In the Garage Area, car owner Hartz supervised a photography session with Frame and no one in the pit area seemed to pay much attention until the #14 car did not appear.

Patrolman J R McCormick of the Indiana State Police, on duty on 16^th Street, later provided the only eyewitness report. McCormick stated that he heard the car hit the wall at the exit of turn one then he watched it slide along the wall for approximately 80 feet before the car climbed the 3-foot high wall and slid along the top of the short chute wall for approximately 75 feet.

This Indianapolis Star photo shows the damage to the Miller-Hartz 2 in Pete's fatal crash as the car is in the garage area the following day. 

The ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ fell off the south wall and tumbled down the 16-foot banking and hit a tree. After the car hit the tree it broke in half. The front of the car from the cowl forward including the engine and front drive traveled another 40 feet while the crushed tail of the car rested against the tree.

Officer McCormick rushed to the scene and removed Hahn from the wreckage of the car but he died before the ambulance arrived. McCormick reported Kreis’ body landed 20 feet from the wreckage and that Pete had been killed instantly.

Doctor John Slab, the Marion County deputy coroner who investigated reported that Kreis suffered a fractured skull, crushed chest and partial amputation trauma to both his legs. Hahn, the riding mechanic, suffered a fractured skull, broken leg and arm and crushed chest.  

The #14 Miller-Hartz reportedly struck the same tree George W. “Benny” Benefiel hit in the crash of the Jones & Maley Special in qualifying two years earlier that killed riding mechanic Harry Cox. Officials never determined the cause of the Kreis fatal accident but speculation focused on mechanical or tire failure.

A later unidentified witness described as a track guard by the Indidapolis News claimed that he saw the #14 car’s wheels shimmying before it hit the wall. Based on that observation, experts surmised that either a steering knuckle or tie rod connection broke.

The afternoon of the Kreis/Hahn fatality, Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Eddie Rickenbacker gave what in retrospect seems to be a rather callous statement to the Indianapolis News “a serious accident happened at the race track this forenoon and I deeply regret it. However, it is a thing that happens in every walk of life. Men are willing to take a chance in pioneering for progress and glory.” 

21-year-old riding mechanic Williams Robert “Bob” or “Howdy” Hahn, raised on a turkey ranch in Chino (often erroneously reported as Chico) California had raced on the West Coast in some CARA (California Auto Racing Association) dirt track events in 1932.

Hahn raced “back east” in 1933 at tracks in Lewistown Pennsylvania, Woodbridge and Flemington New Jersey and the Harford County fairground in Maryland.  In 1934 he returned to California, lived in Manhattan Beach and worked as a mechanic for Harry Hartz. Bob, divorced with a son William Hahn Junior was buried May 29 1934 in Forest Park Cemetery in Glendale California.

With Pete’s mother at home convalescing after an appendectomy, Kreis family friend Dr. Herbert Craig and Pete’s brother-in-law Herbert Clark left Knoxville on Friday for Indianapolis to retrieve and return Pete’s remains to Knoxville, with his funeral held on Sunday afternoon May 27.

Several hundred people attended the ceremony at Mann’s Chapel with more than a hundred floral offerings that included a 12-foot diameter floral steering wheel. The funeral procession to Asbury Cemetery in Knox County included more than 100 cars where Pete Kreis, a bachelor survived by grandparents, parents, 2 brothers and 3 married sisters was interred.  

One brother, John, died in a car accident two years later and the other, Roy, with whom Pete worked with at the construction firm, died of a heart attack in 1937. His mother died in 1938 at age 65 and his father fell to his death in a barn on his turkey farm at age 72 in 1945.     

After being torn in half in the crash Louis “Curly” Wetteroth rebuilt the ‘Miller Hartz 2’ for Harry Hartz who entered the car at Indianapolis in 1936.  Sophomore driver Eylard Theodore ‘Ted’ Horn started eleventh, led 16 laps and finished in second place at Indianapolis in 1936.

Horn returned in the same car the following year, fitted with a supercharger, and finished in third place in the 1937 Indianapolis 500-mile race. In 1938, after the end of the “junk formula” rules package, fitted with a new body and rear suspension, Horn qualified sixth and finished fourth in the ‘Miller-Hartz 2’

After Ted Horn left Hartz for the Boyle Valve racing team for 1939, veteran Herb Ardinger drove the Miller-Hartz in 1939 followed by midget racer Mel Hansen in 1940. Hartz did not enter the car for the 1941 running of the 500-mile race. 

After the war, new car owner Robert J McManus entered it for rookie Tony Bettenhausen in 1946 and Tony made his first '500' start in the machine and finished 20th.  In 1947, motorcycle racer  Roland Free returned after a 17-year absence and finsihed 17th after he spun out on lap 87. 

Acquired by Indianapolis Motor Speedway owner Anton “Tony” Hulman after its racing days, today the ‘Miller-Hartz 2’ is part of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum collection restored and displayed as the 1932 ‘500’ winner.  

Author's photos of the restored Miller-Hartz 2 at the

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum

author's photo

Albert Jacob “Pete” Kreis’ cemetery monument, erected in September 1935, measures 11 feet wide and 5 feet high and weighs an estimated eight tons including the concrete foundation. On the face of the monument is a replica of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway race track, complete with a detailed marble replica of the #14 Miller-Hartz car jumping the wall at the location of Pete’s fatal crash. The inscription on the monument reads “The Last Lap.” 

author's photo

The center of the marble monument is a detailed relief portrait of Pete in his racing helmet while the left side of the monument shows the outline of a race starter that strongly resembles AAA steward Eddie Edenburn as he displays the checkered flag.

The huge block of grey Tennessee marble came from the Kreis family’s Appalachian Marble Quarry Company.  The sculptor of the monument, Italian emigre Albert Milani of the Day Marble & Granite Company, worked non-stop for nine weeks to complete the monument placed in the Asbury cemetery located two miles from Pete’s childhood home.  Readers of The New York Times Magazine recognized Milani’s work on the Pete Kreis monument as the most outstanding of 1935.    

In July 1948, the new Broadway Speedway in Fountain City, north of Knoxville presented “The Pete Kreis Memorial” midget racing program on its ¼-mile dirt oval sanctioned by the short-lived Indiana-based Consolidated Midget Auto Racing Association.

The CMARA racers mainly drove V8-60 Ford powered midgets, but boasted two stars in Offenhauser-powered midgets – Woody Campbell and Gene Force, but Walter “Leadfoot” Geis won the race and received the trophy from Hazen Kreis, Pete’s first cousin. Although the track existed through the 1958 season it never repeated the “Pete Kreis Memorial Race.”

A sportsman that competed purely for the love of sport, Pete Kreis never won any AAA races but his driving skills were highly regarded by fellow competitors (and later car owners) Harry Hartz, Earl Cooper, and Tommy Milton. Kreis competed in a very dangerous era of automobile racing with cloth helmets wound up giving his life for the sport, and his sacrifice is honored with a magnificent monument. 

 

 

Get your tickets now for

the 2017 Racers Reunion

 

 

There are many exciting events on tap for the 2017 edition of Bart Stevens’ Racers Reunion to be held in Irving Texas on November 11.  In addition to the special tribute to our nation’s veterans for Veterans Day, the banquet will feature as a special guest, three-time Indianapolis 500-mile race winner, the legendary Bobby Unser who will share stories of his many racing victories and times as a racing commentator for ABC Sports. 

Also scheduled for the eighth annual Racers Reunion are programs that will examine the first 50 years of the International Motor Contest Association (IMCA) and the life of pioneering Hall of Fame drag racer, Bobby Langley, the USAC Hall of Fame induction of the legendary Texas racer Lloyd Ruby and the presentation of the inaugural Brady Bacon Baton Award to one of racing's future stars.

Join the editor and writer of this website at the Racers Reunion - tickets for the eighth annual Racers Reunion Banquet, which in addition to the feature presentations includes an afternoon guest speaker, autograph session and an afternoon of bench racing with a large collection of vintage race cars and memorabilia are available at http://www.radiusnation.net

The 1934 “Jinx Day Auto Derby”

Part One- The wonders of the 1933 World’s Fair

The 1934 ‘Jinx Day Auto Derby’ held on Friday, July 13, 1934 which matched 13 famous cars and drivers holds a unique place in automotive racing history, but before we get into the details of the race, we first need to examine the setting for this unique race.

The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair officially known as the “Century of Progress Exhibition” opened May 27 1933 and ran through November 12 1933. Its purpose was to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the city's incorporation and, more importantly to provide jobs and recreation for a nation mired in a deepening depression. The fair site covered 424 acres on the shore of Lake Michigan between 12th and 39th streets, south of the Chicago Navy Pier in Chicago, within walking distance of Chicago's downtown.

The 1933 World’s Fair proved to be such a success for the local economy that as the original scheduled closing date drew near, the organizers announced that the Fair would be opened again to run from May 26 to October 31, 1934. But let us not get ahead of ourselves just yet…..

With more than 300 companies involved, to see the all the exhibits at the ‘Century of Progress’ would have required visitors to walk more than 84 miles.  New consumer products shown to the world included items as simple as the Metflex stainless steel  ice tray which enabled consumers to easily go from “from tray to glass,” to the new air-cooled Electrolux, the gas refrigerator advertised as “totally silent and trouble-free” as it had no moving parts. The fair was also the site of the debut of streamlined passenger trains, irradiated milk, automatic signal control elevators, and Westinghouse’s high-pressure mercury lights.

A postcard of the Havoline Thermometer

Visitors could ride the Sky-Ride, designed by Robinson & Steinman which took passengers on an 1850-foot ride in zeppelin-shaped cars suspended 219 feet above the fair, then look over the world's tallest thermometer, which was twenty-one stories (218 ft.) high and displayed the temperature with neon light tubes, sponsored by the Indian Refining Company, Lawrenceville, Ill., makers of Waxfree Havoline Motor Oils which was sold at all Texaco stations. The Sinclair Refining Company presented an outdoor exhibit of animated dinosaurs that included recreations of a stegosaurus, protoceratops and a seventy foot long brontosaurus. 

Two postcards of the Houses of Tomorrow 

The ‘Houses of Tomorrow’ exhibit  contained ten complete finished houses in a neighborhood setting which featured the  two-story Armco-Ferro Porcelain Enameled Frameless Steel  House Built By Ferro Enamel Corporation (builder and supplier of enamel service stations). 

The Masonite Corporation bragged that “millions of feet of Masonite was used in thousands of places” at the Fair built a house out of  insulated Masonite.  Century Homes’   presented “America’s first glass home” a three-story octagon home, while the Brick Manufacturers' Association of America presented “the supersafe home of the future.”

The Southern Cypress Manufacturers' Association exhibit a house built entirely of Pecky Cypress, while the Rostone Company of Lafayette Indiana , makers of Rosite fiber-reinforced unsaturated polyester resins used in electrical gear, introduced the Rostone synthetic stone fireproof steel framed home with a cellwood interior, and  Stran Steel built two steel framed homes,  the “town house” and “garden home”  which they claimed were “fire safe, lightning proof, shrink proof, termite proof and salvageable.”

A postcard of the Firestone World's Fair factory

  

Firestone Tire and Rubber Company had a small tire factory built on site and a display of the 1911 ‘500’ winning Marmon Wasp in a glass-enclosed case alongside “one of the winning cars from the 1933 Indianapolis 500-mile race” (actually Tony Gulotta’s 1933 fifth place finisher, a Studebaker). The display not so subtly reminded visitors that for 14 consecutive years, Firestone Gum-dipped tires have been on the winning car “in the most grueling test of tire dependability the world has ever known.”

A postcard of the Firestone singing fountain

The Firestone exhibit also featured two one of a kind display, a “singing color fountain,” six dome-shaped fountains which shot water 20 feet in the air synchronized to music, and the “first in the world” 80-foot long multi-color shadow sign. Goodyear countered by offering rides in its new blimps, the Reliance and the Puritan, which became familiar sites cruising over the Fair from Goodyear’s landing field south of the Chrysler exhibition building.

While there were many wonders to be experienced in this Depression-era World’s Fair, the most stunning had to be the automobiles, as all the manufacturers were represented, and many of the luxury brands introduced one-a-kind customs built just for the Fair. 

The restored Packard Car of the Dome

  

Packard showed its “Car of the Dome,” a Packard 1107 147-inch wheelbase V-12 powered chassis fitted with a four door sedan body built by Dietrich, Inc. designed by Raymond Deitrich that featured a V-windshield style. All the body hardware was gold-plated, as were the steering column and all the instruments. 

A view of the interior of the Packard Car of the Dome

The Packard's  interior was outfitted with highly polished Carpathian elm with a cabinet behind the front seat stretching the width of the car. One wonders how well the 160 horsepower engine worked to move a vehicle with a curb weight of over 5000 pounds. This restored car was later purchased by Bob Bahre, owner of new Hampshire Motor Speedway. 

The restored Duesenberg "Twenty Grand"

Duesenberg presented the "Twenty Grand,” so called because it reported cost $20,000 to build (nearly $6 million today). The Arlington Torpedo Duesenberg SJ chassis number 2539 was fitted with the body built by Rollston of New York designed by Gordon Buerhig. This beautiful machine was later restored and fitted engine 513 and is one of the gems of the Nethercutt Museum Collection in Sylmar, California. 

A restored Silver Arrow 

Pierce-Arrow presented the third of five modernistic ‘Silver Arrow’ concept cars designed by Phillip O. Wright and originally introduced at the January 1933 New York auto show. Each car was hand-built reportedly a cost of $10,000 each on a Pierce Arrow model 1236 chassis, the Silver Arrow featured sleek fastback styling recessed door handles, no running boards and carried its spare tires in compartments behind each front wheel. 

Each of the five Silver Arrow cars was powered by a 462-cu.in. L-head V-12 engine, rated at 175hp with a claimed top speed of 115 MPH. An eight-cylinder Silver Arrow 2-door production version followed in 1935 and 1935 but these cars were weak imitations of the originals.  

A postcard view of the Studebaker display

Studebaker went in a different direction and built a mammoth wooden model of their President Land Cruiser automobile. The giant Land Cruiser, displayed in the great hall of the “Travel and Transport Building,” was 80 feet long, 28 feet high, and 30 feet wide. The running boards were 21 feet in length, the windshield wiper three feet long, and the tires 12-1/2 feet in diameter.

A photo of one of the Studebaker miniatures 

For maximum appeal, the giant Studebaker was painted ‘Canary Yellow,’ a color later made available on production cars for an extra $80. Below the running board was a door that led visitors into an auditorium inside the massive wooden creation that held 80 guests. Films were shown that extolled the virtues of the new Studebakers and that Studebaker had set more than 140 records for speed and endurance. A 5 3/4-inch long pot-metal miniature, molded on site by National Products with “Replica of Giant World’s Fair Studebaker” cast into the trunk, was sold as a souvenir.

A postcard of the Nash display

The Nash display featured the Whiting Corporation’s (an overhead crane manufacturer) Auto-Parking Tower an eighty foot tall glass-enclosed tower stocked with sixteen Nash six and eight cylinder automobiles on “an endless chain”

The Dymaxion 

The Gulf Oil exhibit featured Buckminster Fuller's “Dymaxion Car” a 20-foot long aluminum bodied car shaped like a blimp that rode on a steel frame with a canvas top. The front-wheel drive car had three wheels, two up front, one in the back and a periscope instead of a rear window. “Dymaxion” was the combination of the words “.dynamic, maximum, and tension,” to summarize Fuller’s goal to do more with less.

Chicago Daily News columnist Howard Vincent O’Brien described the Dymaxion on August 15, 1934 as “well worth a look if you are interested in knowing what sort of vehicle may soon be taking you about. It’s a three-wheeled affair, driven from the front wheels, and with the engine in the rear. It turns on its own base, and, using a standard Ford engine as a power plant, it will go – says Mr. Fuller – 125 miles an hour, doing 30 miles to the gallon of gasoline. I haven’t ridden in it yet, but those who have say it floats like an airplane.”

Fuller formed the Dymaxion Corporation on March 4, 1933 and set up his workshop in a former building of the defunct Locomobile Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut  In three months Fuller and his 27 employees finished the first of three prototypes which was sold to Gulf Oil to promote its aviation gasoline.

On October 28, 1933, the Gulf Dymaxion was hit and rolled over four times in a traffic accident near the entrance of the World’s Fair. At the time of the accident the Dymaxion to transporting two male passengers to the airport to board a plane to Akron Ohio so the men could board the Graf Zeppelin to return home. 

 

The 36 year old driver, Francis T. Turner, described at the time in news reports as an a race car driver from Birmingham Alabama but actually an aviation mechanic, died of his injuries, and his two passengers were injured. William Francis Forbes-Sempill of Scotland suffered a fractured skull and Charles Dollfuss of France suffered cuts and bruises and internal injuries.

Press reports following the accident only stated that Fuller’s “weird car” had rolled in the accident, which led to the public perception that the Dymaxion was unsafe.  The subsequent coroner’s inquest found the actual cause of the impact was a collision with a car driven by a Chicago parks commissioner who wanted a closer look at the Dymaxion.  

According to witnesses' testimony, the two vehicles were traveling down the road in the same direction at and estimated 70 mph, and Turner tried to evade colliding with the politician's wandering car to no avail. The inquest found the design of the Dymaxion was not a factor in the accident, but by the time that decision was announced the negative publicity had already done its damage; financing collapsed and Dymaxion cars never entered production.

Part two of the Jinx Day Auto Derby history, coming soon, will provide more background for our story that includes an examination of the amazing exhibits of the Detroit “Big Three” automobile manufacturers at the 1933 World’s Fair.