11 Few automobile inventions had as big an impact on the automobile as the electric starter. The concept was pioneered and patented in America at Dayton Engineering Laboratories (DELCO) in 1911 by Charles Kettering and Henry Leland. Prior to the electric starter, cars were started by hand cranking, often kicking back and resulting in untold numbers of hand, wrist, and arm injuries. Cadillac was the first major brand to implement the electric starter in 1912; Ford was one of the last to abandon the crank-starting method in 1919. By the 1920s, nearly all of the major U.S. brands featured electric starters, further fueling the automotive craze of the Roaring Twenties.
12 Crafted by the E. R. Thomas Motor Company in 1907, the Thomas Model 35 Flyer is arguably the most famous American turn-of-the-century race car. The 5,000-pound car, featuring a 4-cylinder 60-hp engine, won the first, and, to date, only race around the world in 1908. Driver George Schuster took the green flag in Times Square in New York City on February 12, and along with five other teams, headed for Paris, France. However, only three cars finished the 22,000-mile race with the Thomas Flyer declared the winner 169 days later on July 30, 1908. The Flyer, dubbed Leslie Special, was introduced to a new generation of racing fans in the 1965 movie The Great Race. Today, the original Thomas Flyer is on exhibit at the National Automobile Museum in Reno, Nevada.
13 Organized by General Motors founder William Durant and driver Bob Burman, the Buick Racing Team dominated much of the early racing scene. The team, which was the first factory-backed racing effort, included Burman and the Chevrolet brothers (Louis and Arthur) as drivers. The team won hundreds of events during its run from 1908 to 1911, including a victory by Burman in the first American Automobile Association (AAA) –sanctioned race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (the Prest-O-Lite 250) August 19, 1909. With its racing heritage firmly established, Buick became a long-time NASCAR player, capturing two Sprint Cup Manufacturers’ Championships (1981 and 1982).
14 Winner of the first Indianapolis 500 in 1911, the Marmon Wasp Model 32 was the only single-seat race car in the field that day. Piloted by the 1910 AAA driving champion Ray Harroun, the first use of a rear-view mirror was employed, allowing Harroun to be the only driver in the field without a riding mechanic. The feat introduced one of countless innovations developed in auto racing that eventually made their way into the production of everyday passenger vehicles.
Ray Harroun’s Marmon Wasp, a 6-cylinder car with an engine displacing 477 ci, was based on the 1909 Marmon Model 32 production car. (John Close Photo)
15 While aerodynamic testing is commonplace in today’s modern NASCAR, it wasn’t a consideration in racing until Frank Lockhart debuted the Stutz Black Hawk Special in 1928. Scale models of the car were constructed and aero-tested in both the Curtiss Aircraft and Army Air Services wind tunnels, one of the first American cars to be tested in such a manner. At 2,800-pounds, the vehicle featured a twin turbocharged Miller U-16 engine. It was also the first land speed record car to use an intercooler for the turbos. After a failed land speed record run at Daytona Beach that ended when Lockhart barrel-rolled the car into the ocean, the Black Hawk was repaired for another run at Daytona Beach on April 25. This time, the right-rear tire blew at more than 220 mph sending the car into a series of prolonged flips. Lockhart (the winner of the 1926 Indianapolis 500) was thrown from the vehicle and killed instantly. The engine was salvaged and later installed in the Sampson 16 Special for the 1939 Indianapolis 500, as well as the 1940, 1941, and 1946 Indy 500s. The engine is on display in the Indianapolis Hall of Fame Museum today.
16 Developed in 1929, the Chevrolet inline 6-cylinder engine quickly became a challenger to the Ford Flathead V-8 engine in the early years of stock car racing. The 193.9-ci six-banger produced 50 hp and featured cast-iron pistons and a forged-steel crankshaft. The engine, lighter than the Ford V-8, enabled Chevrolet and other 1930s GM coupes and sedans using the Stovebolt 6 to win countless local stock car, roadster, and Jalopy races against their Blue Oval competitors all the way into the 1960s. The only engine Chevrolet offered from 1929 through 1954 (including a 235-ci model in the new 1953 Chevrolet Corvette) was relegated to a secondary racing option with the 1955 introduction of the Chevy small-block V-8.
17 Although not the first V-8 engine produced, the Ford Flathead V-8 is one of the most important. Introduced in 1932, the engine was the first V-8 offered in an affordable American passenger car. It became a stalwart of the early stock car racing community as 1930s Ford coupes, roadsters, and sedans became the hot iron at local racetracks and stock car events throughout the country. The original engine measured 221 ci and produced about 65 hp. Juiced up with aftermarket items such as multiple carburetors, performance pistons, heads, and crankshaft, the Ford Flathead V-8 could easily be pushed to over 200 hp. The engine made the early stripped-down Fords the cars to beat in the early days of stock car racing and remained a stout competitor into the 1970s.
18 Today’s NASCAR Modified division got its start in the 1933 Elgin Road Races. The event was supposed to be for “stock roadster cars” but thanks to Edsel Ford, it turned out to be anything but Ford’s car featured a Harry Miller–built Ford 221-ci L-Flathead V-8 with a 3-speed manual transmission and live axle suspension. The 112-inch wheelbase featured transverse leaf springs and four-wheel mechanically actuated drum brakes. Stripped down to its most basic essentials with no fenders, interior, rumble seat, glass, or lighting, it was so fast that Ford immediately ordered Miller to build 10 of them. The day before the Elgin races, driver Fred Frame crashed his car into a grove of trees in Turn 7 and destroyed it. Ford had a back-up car readied and entered it in the race; Frame drove it to what is widely considered one of the greatest early stock car races ever. After a promotional victory tour, the car was stored in a barn for decades before a full restoration in 1988. It remains one of the most important race cars in the history of Ford Motor Company.
Jalopy Stock Car Racing was the grassroots backbone of the sport for nearly three decades. Here, a packed hill and infield crowd presses forward to get the best look at this action. (Photo Courtesy Georgia Racing Hall of Fame)
19 The engineers who control the building and performance of today’s modern NASCAR vehicles have nothing on the men who fashioned Jalopy stock cars from the 1930s through the late 1950s. The lack of money in the 1930s led to the Jalopy movement by using the ever-increasing car parts inventories at local junkyards. Basically stripped of their fenders, running boards, glass, and anything else deemed unnecessary to race, these rudimentary cars featured items such as a belt to strap the doors shut, large stripped bolts as welded braces, and fuel tanks crafted out of wash tubs. As racing became more sophisticated in the 1950s, the Jalopy class began to die out and was eventually replaced by a new brand of purpose-built lightweight modified cars. America’s first entry-level stock car racing class, the Jalopies, eventually faded from the racing scene completely by the 1970s.
20 Given that the earliest race cars were production vehicles, getting to and from the racetrack was a simple exercise of driving the car there and back. By the 1920s, Indy and sprint car drivers started using trailers to haul their race cars. Stock car racing, however, didn’t adopt this trend until the mid-1950s. Meanwhile, early Jalopy and roadster cars (illegal to drive on the street) were pulled to and from the track by trucks or more powerful production cars using a tow bar.
21 The front fenders of today’s NASCAR entries are “stickered up” with the logos of companies offering contingency prize money in addition to the winnings earned in the race. The first time these types of contingency