Forgotten Greatness

The greatest American driving talent from the early days of motorsport who did not compete in the Indianapolis 500 was undoubtedly George Robertson. New York city-born in 1884, Robertson was part of the first generation to grow up with the automobile. The machines were a part of his life more so than the average youngster when his father founded one of America’s first used car dealerships in 1901.
 
By the time he was 20 he was competing in hill climbs and dirt track sprint race meets. The very next year he drove in the 1905 American Elimination Trial, the contest to qualify as one of five entries to represent the United States in the country’s biggest and most important auto race, the Vanderbilt Cup. He struggled handling the big, temperamental, front-wheel drive Christie.
 
While the car was allowed to compete in the upcoming international contest, race officials informed J. Walter Christie that it was on the condition that he be at the wheel of his radical mechanical beast, not the 21-year-old kid. Christie hadn’t lost faith in Robertson, but the officials had so the owner/designer complied.
 
Confident and undaunted, George Robertson returned for another shot at the great Long Island contest the following year in 1906. Driving for Edgar and Elmer Apperson, founders of the Kokomo, Indiana manufacturer, Apperson Automobile Company, Robertson astonished railbirds and “clockers” with amazing speed during practice for that year’s American Elimination Trial.
 
Unfortunately the opportunity ended with disaster. On Wednesday morning of race week while scorching the 29.7-mile public roads circuit Robertson lost control of the speedy “Jack Rabbit” racer to broadside an unyielding telegraph pole at the side of the road. The car literally wrapped itself around the hefty structure with such force some of its twisted, torn metal embedded in the wood and fastened the 2,000 pound machine to the monolith some three feet off the ground — almost like a paper poster.
 
It could have been much worse.
 
Both Robertson and his riding mechanic, Arthur Warren, were cast aside to land in tall grass some 50 feet distant. They were understandably shaken up but doctors could determine nothing more serious than a fractured collar bone for Robertson and two broken wrists for his companion. The car was junk and of course the men missed the race.
 
The exact cause of the accident was topic of speculation. Understandably the Apperson brothers wanted to point fingers at a faulty tire, and there were plenty of those during the era. Robertson had said it felt like a steering gear failed. Some might have suggested the steering component that slipped up was actually the exuberant driver, still not quite 22, behind the wheel.
 
Regardless, historians might suggest that Robertson learned some valuable lessons through experience. In 1907 he almost certainly honed his race craft by competing — and finishing — several 24-hour “grinders” at dirt oval horse tracks. In these events he partnered with Al Poole, a respected riding mechanic who later in his career graduated to the driver’s seat for select races. For the record, there was no Vanderbilt Cup race in 1907.
 
Robertson’s gains in skill were evident in 1908, the year he won the Vanderbilt Cup in his only appearance in the big show. He drove for Locomobile, who had given him an audition of sorts in Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park stock car road race. Robertson won the race handily, earning the company’s confidence. He also set a new world record for miles covered in 24 hours at the Brighton Beach dirt oval.
 
Still, his maturation was not entirely complete. With the race in hand he refused to let up his torrid pace and nearly threw it all away when he skidded off the course in the final lap. He and riding mechanic Glenn Etheridge were able to keep the car running and resume in the lead.
 
There was also a very real asterisk casting a shadow on this triumph. While promoters of the American auto industry and at Locomobile in particular wanted to revel in how this was the first victory of a USA-built car over international competition, it was something less than that.
 
A dispute between the race’s sanctioning body, the American Automobile Association (AAA), and the rival Automobile Club of America (ACA) had resulted in a compromise that sent all the European factory teams to a new road race, the American Grand Prize in Savannah. After a damaging public relations war of about a year, the two groups agreed that the Vanderbilt Cup should be a domestic, or “national” competition and the American GP would be “international.”
 
George Robertson’s driving career came to an unexpected end during practice for the 1910 Vanderbilt Cup. He agreed to take a newspaper reporter on a high-speed lap of the circuit only to have the man panic and clutch him as he approached a fast curve. The car plunged off the course and while both men survived (the reporter actually walked away relatively unscathed), there was some damage to at least one of Robertson’s arms that weakened it so significantly he no longer had the strength to steer the big, heavy machines of the day.
 
Robertson went on to great things serving his country in World War I and holding significant management positions at companies like Ford, the Motor Development Corporation and Roto-Shaver Inc. He did a stint in journalism as publisher of the Roslyn News, the Nassau County Sun and the Williston Post. He continued with racing as well. As circuit manager at the Roosevelt Speedway he hosted the Vanderbilt Cup Revivals of 1936 and 1937.
 
Perhaps most interesting of all was that he was team manager for Duesenberg when they tackled the French Grand Prix in 1921. Two of the three team cars failed during the race but the survivor was the one driven by Jimmy Murphy who won to send shockwaves across France. The triumph remains one of only two successes for American-built cars in Grand Prix racing.
 
Robertson closed out his life as an active member of the American Legion and clubs preserving the history of the earliest days of the automobile. He passed away in 1955 at the age of 71.