The Gold Plated Car

Not unlike presenting a pace car to the winner of the Indianapolis 500, in 1909 one of the Hoosier capital city's largest auto manufacturers promised a "gold plated" passenger car to the driver setting the fastest time for a mile run on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. That company was Overland, and the car was a 1910 Overland Model 38. The image you see here was published in the Indianapolis News to illustrate the offer.
 
Illustrate is the operative word. Although it is not explained in the article the image supported - or in the associated cutline - this is most certainly an artist's rendering and not a photograph. Further, from the description it is not exactly clear what is meant by "gold plated."
 
The article indicates that certain fixtures, such as head lamps, normally cast in brass, would be gold. Forgive our incredulity but we have to assume that those parts were to be plated with some kind of gold alloy - but who can know with certainty? The car was reportedly painted white with gold trim.
 
Regardless, this promotion underscores some differences in the way promoters and fans saw motorsport in those early days. One of the big debates was who had the fastest track. With England's big, high-banked concrete track Brooklands clearly rewarding bravery in drivers as well as brutish engines in cars with 120 mph speeds, world marks were out of reach at American venues.
 
Still, stateside bragging rights were valuable and the Speedway with its five-eighths mile straights was the most exciting prospect going in America. One point to understand is that in the lexicon of the day when someone said, "track record," they meant it in a general sense, not specific to a particular venue. Track record meant simply, the fastest mile recorded on a track, regardless of its length or the composition of its running surface.
 
The fastest miles were on the hard-packed sands of beaches and the most noteworthy was the seven-mile stretch between Ormond and Daytona. There Frank Marriott in his Stanley Steamer exceeded 126 MPH in 1906.
 
Achieving anything close to that kind of speed on a track was simply impossible. The Speedway's stretches were the longest but a driver still had to slow and set up for a turn before the conclusion of his run.
 
The Overland promotion was for the fastest mile at the Speedway during the 1909 racing season. It was announced when that season was supposed to include not just the inaugural race meet in August but also a second one a month later and then finally an autumn 24-hour contest. Mile and kilometer time trials were to be conducted at all three.
 
The utter catastrophe of the first auto races at the Speedway has been obscured by the passage of time. Five people were killed, two of them spectators. Think about it. Five people lost their lives. Other spectators were injured.
 
That came on the heels of a fiasco motorcycle meet a week earlier where arguably the biggest star of the sport, Jake De Rosier, was critically injured. In order to literally save the track the founders had to embark on a hugely expensive undertaking of a massive overhaul of the grounds, the centerpiece of which was a complete repaving of the running surface with 3.2 million bricks.
 
Even the irrepressible Founder and President of the Speedway, Carl Fisher, could not muster the energy to simultaneously stage large scale spectator events. Aside from a timed testing session in December, it would be May 1910 before the track was open again for wheel-to-wheel competition.
 
As for the Overland promotion, I believe this faded away for 1909, along with the events. It returned in 1910 and the winner was Barney Oldfield at just over 101 MPH for the mile. He was not awarded the Overland until the end of the racing season and the best word is that he gave it to his wife, Bess. Probably a good move.
 
Another good move is for you to click thru and soak up some amazing history only available at First Super Speedway.