The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century (Vintage) (15 page)

As for Ford, he seemed more unsettled than inspired by the tremendous power of the vehicles. As he and Cooper began test runs in the fall of 1902, he provided a rather terrified description of the racing monsters he had created:

In fact, the roar of the 999 was so window-rattlingly loud and fearsome that Ford and his helpers dared not drive it through Detroit streets to the racetrack. Ironically, it had to be towed there by horses.
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A local newspaper reporter observed one of Cooper and Ford's test drives:

Thus Ford's new race car stood poised for achievement, the product of the combined efforts of a talented team of associates. But his collaboration with Tom Cooper and Harold Wills loomed relatively unimportant in comparison with another new friendship. In 1902, Ford made the acquaintance of a man who would become one of the celebrities of the new century. Emblazoned in newspapers across the country and acclaimed by thousands, his name would become synonymous with speed and daring. And his career was launched in concert with Henry Ford.

In the early 1930s, Henry Ford and Barney Oldfield met for the first time in many years. Both were attending the Indianapolis 500 race, and as they warmly shook hands and reminisced about earlier days, a number of
reporters took notes. Ford grew sentimental. “We started together at the bottom and we owe each other a lot,” he declared. “After all, it could be said that you made me and I made you.” Oldfield, his trademark cigar clenched tightly in his teeth, grinned devilishly as he pulled out his wallet and opened it. It was empty. “Yeah,” he replied to Ford, “but I did a damn sight better job of it than you did!”
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This reply summed up his personality. Pugnacious, fearless, and always at the ready with a colorful quip, Barney Oldfield had become one of the great popular heroes in early-twentieth-century America. Constantly chewing on a cigar, his handkerchief knotted around his neck, and using his famous “underhand” grip on the steering wheel—his hands lay at the bottom of the wheel, palms facing his body, as his fingers curled around from behind and his thumbs from the front—he guided smoke-belching behemoths around dirt tracks throughout the country to the cheers of thousands. Oldfield won races and set speed records in great batches from 1902 to 1918, and in so doing he became the public symbol of this thrilling new sport. His name became synonymous with speed. Meanwhile, this outlandish Ohioan, with his colorful quotes and flamboyant style, cut quite a figure. Equal parts showman and athlete, Oldfield demonstrated an instinct for the publicity limelight. His barnstorming antics and reputation as a fearless speed demon were carefully constructed images, and the fact that they drew widespread notice came as no surprise to the man who built them.

Born on January 29, 1878, to a farm family in Fulton County, Ohio, he had been named Berna Eli Oldfield. Around age ten, the boy had accompanied his family to Toledo when his father sought steadier, more lucrative employment. As a teenager in the early 1890s, young Barney became enamored of bicycling at the time of its national craze. He was particularly attracted to racing, a sport that had begun generating much attention from newspaper accounts. Oldfield entered his first race at age sixteen and started winning prizes. After a brief and undistinguished career detour in the boxing ring—he fought as “The Toledo Terror”—Oldfield signed on with the Stearns Bicycle Company and became a professional racer. He spent much of the late 1890s traveling the circuit in the Midwest, and gradually drifted into motorized-bicycle racing. From there it was but a short step into automobile racing, which he took up in 1902.

Within a short time, Oldfield emerged as a nationally known driver, his quick reflexes, physical strength, and daredevil temperament making him a natural. In 1903, he was the first person to break the mile-a-minute barrier in an automobile, an achievement that earned him the newspaper title of “America's Premier Driver.” His purple-prose description of the feat demonstrated Oldfield's gift for self-promotion:

In succeeding years, Oldfield's reputation soared. He first joined up with Alexander Winton to drive his “Bullet” racer, and then contracted with the Peerless Company to operate its “Green Dragon.” He won numerous races in both cars, and then purchased his own machine in 1907, the German-built “Blitzen Benz,” in which he set an astonishing world record by going 131.7 miles per hour at the Daytona, Florida, track. By the 1910s, his racing career had exploded into national prominence. He drove a “Christie” early in the decade—other drivers had walked away from this front-drive 300-horsepower monster machine, deeming it uncontrollable—and won numerous races and set speed records all over the United States. Suspended for a time by the American Automobile Association for participating in unauthorized events, he advertised himself as “Speed King of the World” and took to driving exhibition races at county and state fairs. He supplemented this lucrative endeavor by striking a commercial deal with Harvey Firestone. As Oldfield tore around racetracks throughout the American hinterland, tens of thousands of fans saw the slogan painted on the side of his race car: “Firestone Tires Are My Only Life Insurance.”

Oldfield demonstrated the showman's instincts, for example, in deciding on the matter of racing apparel when he began driving the Peerless Company's Green Dragon racer. “Resolving to set myself apart, I decided to do all my driving in a suit of green leather to match the color of my car,” he wrote. “I got a good many laughs and comments from spectators, who said I was trying to bring the customs of the running-horse track to the automobile business. They were doing just what I wanted them to do— notice me.”
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He also manipulated newspaper reporters shamelessly, as when he allowed them to spread exaggerated estimates of his income. “As it was good publicity, I let the newspapers tell me how much money I made, without raising a dissenting voice,” he explained. “I knew that all the world loves a successful man, and I was willing to have them make me highly successful if they cared to.” He also attracted headlines and drew crowds all over the country with outrageous stunts. In 1914, for example, Oldfield set up a series of match races with the aviator Lincoln Beachey. Advertisements blared out “The Demon of the Sky vs. the Daredevil of the Earth for the
Championship of the Universe!” Unbelievably, these two would tear around large dirt racetracks, Oldfield hunched over the steering wheel of his car while Beachey's low-flying biplane skimmed along no more than ten feet above his head. A series of spectacular car crashes—Oldfield always seemed to walk away, albeit with a series of bone fractures and lacerations— only added to the mystique.
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Oldfield's private life enhanced his reputation. His extravagant habits— ordering Havana cigars in two-thousand-lot boxes, wagering large sums at the horse track, staying at the fanciest hotels and dispensing $5tips, drinking and brawling in saloons all over the country—kept his larger-than-life image before the public. He even ventured into acting, making a brief appearance in a Broadway musical before taking a starring role in a Mack Sennett film entitled
Barney Oldfield's Race for Life.
He fraternized with roughneck sports figures such as the baseball hero Ty Cobb, and set up a grudge race with the controversial African American boxer Jack Johnson. Shortly after his retirement from the racing game in 1918, Oldfield demonstrated his public appeal at the opening of the new Beverly Hills Speedway. As the festivities unfolded, he shared a front-row grandstand, casually mixing with movie stars Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, Wallace Beery, and Tom Mix.

Thus, in the new leisure culture of early-twentieth-century America, where baseball jostled with boxing, movies with music halls, and automobile racing with amusement parks, Barney Oldfield became a “star.” But as the years unfolded, many forgot that his career had been launched in the early years of the century when he joined forces with a little-known carmaker named Henry Ford. This alliance revealed much about both men. Their joint undertaking not only started Oldfield on the path to fame and fortune, but demonstrated Ford's own knack for finding the limelight.

In 1902, Oldfield, who was racing motorized bicycles, came to Detroit at the request of Tom Cooper to inspect Ford's racing cars. It would be the turning point in his life. Up to this point, Ford had driven his own race cars, but the new models were so powerful that, like Dr. Frankenstein, he grew leery of his own creation. Bluntly put, Ford was scared to drive his own car. After several test runs around Detroit tracks, he had sensibly concluded that he had neither the nerve nor the skill to operate them at optimal level. In Ford's words, “I did not want to take the responsibility of racing the ‘999,’ [and] neither did Cooper.” So he turned elsewhere, and Cooper's friend entered the picture.
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Oldfield was attracted immediately by the situation. Not only did it present the allure of steady work and “a chance to make a chunk of money,” as he recalled later, but it offered “a chance to fool with America's coming
game—racing automobiles.” He instinctively sensed the possibility of fame, and he leaped at it without hesitation. In Oldfield's words, “When Opportunity knocked in that letter from Cooper, I jerked the door open so quickly that she almost fell on her nose in the middle of the room.”
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When Oldfield arrived in Detroit, he quickly sensed that Ford's interest in racing was serious but ephemeral. As the new arrival noted matter-of-factly, Ford had been trying to build a commercial car and was pursuing racing because he knew the value of advertising. These vehicles were in the last stages of completion, and Oldfield pitched in to help finish them along with Ford, Cooper, Wills, and Huff. Quickly sizing up the situation, he grasped that he had been summoned because of his “reputation for having plenty of nerve,” not because of his skill. But Oldfield's risk-taking temperament, strength, quick reflexes, and addiction to speed made him a natural race driver. Ford showed him the ropes during a few practice sessions, and Oldfield's reckless courage did the rest. As Ford said of his new accomplice, “He had never driven a motorcar, but he liked the idea of trying it. He said he would try anything once. It took us only a week to teach him how to drive. The man did not know what fear was. All that he had to learn was how to control the monster.”
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The racers were completed by the early fall of 1902, and the team began the test runs noted earlier. Newspaper reporters were curious about the car, and Ford would explain its special features. He unintentionally highlighted the extreme danger involved in navigating this powerful vehicle at high speed without benefit of a windshield while an open crankcase continuously spewed a mist of oil onto the driver. According to Ford, the car's “tiller”— instead of a steering wheel, it had a straight two-foot length of steel with two handles on each end sitting atop a shaft connected to the car's front-wheel system—provided special benefit to the driver.

This provided but scant comfort, one imagines, to the frequently blinded race driver struggling to keep this roaring machine, with flames spurting out of its four exhausts, from careening off the track.
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Nonetheless, the Ford-Oldfield team looked ahead to the Manufacturer's Challenge Cup race to be held at the Grosse Point track on October 25. Alexander Winton remained the foremost American racing champion,
and he promised to be there. For Ford, this offered another golden opportunity to publicize his expertise as a maker of automobiles. According to Oldfield, he “wasn't satisfied to have Winton the champion driver of America” and saw the Challenge Cup as the perfect opportunity to wrest the top position away from his rival.
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