Automobile Racing. The American love affair with the automobile quickly translated into an enthusiasm for automobile racing. Indeed, many Americans first learned of the
automotive industry through the widely publicized 1895
Chicago Times‐Herald race from Jackson Park to Waukegan, Illinois. Automakers Henry
Ford and Louis Chevrolet both took the lead in sponsoring racers. The Vanderbilt Cup road races on Long Island (begun in 1904) soon attracted 200,000 spectators, but dangerous, expensive road racing became primarily a European, not an American, sport.
Americans preferred oval track racing. Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500 in 1912 in a Marmon Wasp with a rearview mirror, one of the few innovations to move from racers to production cars. Led by Ford in 1913, American automakers abandoned racing, a policy they have pursued inconsistently. They saw few technical benefits, feared bad publicity from accidents, and did not want to compete with European cars. Except at Indianapolis, oval track racing declined by the 1930s.
After
World War II, however, drag racing and stock‐car racing rejuvenated American competition. Drag racing had roots in the
Los Angeles area. Adolescents could afford to buy and modify used Ford Model Ts and V‐8s (introduced in 1932) for quarter‐mile races. In 1951
Hot Rod Magazine editor Wally Parks founded the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA), which soon attracted over fifteen thousand amateur hot rodders. The NHRA‐sanctioned track races became quite sophisticated technically. By 1952 methane‐fueled dragsters could reach 150 miles per hour in a quarter of a mile. Exciting professional duels on drag‐race tracks, hyped by a “gender war” theme between “Big Daddy” Garlits and the first woman racer, Shirley Muldowney, enlivened the 1970s. Street drag racing dwindled in popularity in the 1970s, however, hedged in by environmental restrictions and hard‐to‐modify computerized cars.
Stock car racing became popular because NASCAR (a racing organization founded in 1948) insisted that the races it sponsored involve standard car models stocked at dealerships. Restrictions on modifications guaranteed close races. The stock‐car format proved well adapted to the emerging medium of
television, enjoying special popularity in the
South, where many early racers were said to have gotten their start during the Prohibition Era transporting moonshine liquor.
See also
Motor Vehicles.
Bibliography
H.F. Moorhouse , Driving Ambitions: A Social Analysis of the American Hot Rod Enthusiasm, 1991.
Robert C. Post , High Performance: The Culture and Technology of Drag Racing, 1950–1990, 1994.
Clay McShane
