Frank Duryea Wins First Motor-car Race In USA - November 28, 1895

November 28, 1895

(Photo; berthoudrecorder.com)
Frank Duryea, mechanic and inventor, won the first motor-car race in the United States, a 54-mile loop along the lakeshore from Chicago to Evanston and back again. The race was a harrowing one--it was held during one of Chicago’s great snowstorms, two of the contestants became comatose from exposure to the cold, and the contestants’ cars got stuck in snowdrifts, slid into other vehicles, and stalled repeatedly. Duryea, who completed the race in 10 hours and 23 minutes, traveled at an average speed of 5 1/4 miles per hour.

The world’s first motor race, the 1894 Paris–Rouen, had clearly demonstrated the merits of the Daimler gasoline motor and had generated a great deal of publicity for the horseless carriage. Herman H. Kohlstaat, the publisher of the Chicago Times-Herald and a tireless booster of the newfangled automotive technology, decided to drum up interest in the motor wagon by sponsoring a similar race. More than 80 people entered, most of whom were building their own cars at home; as a result, the event had to be postponed twice because the vast majority of the racers weren’t yet ready.

On the morning of November 28, six inches of snow covered the race-course. A horse-drawn snowplow inched along ineffectually. Because of the bad weather, only six of 89 racers had made it to the starting line: Duryea, Oscar Mueller of Chicago, driving his father’s imported Benz, a Benz sponsored by Macy’s that, the store hoped, would help it to advertise the cars it had begun to sell, a Benz sponsored by the De La Vergne Refrigeration Company of New York and two electric cars whose batteries died almost immediately.

Ten hours and 23 minutes after the race began, the Duryea wagon sputtered across the finish line, finishing first. Meanwhile, according to news accounts, the Mueller moto-cycle "puffed its way slowly and laboriously along, its pneumatic tires wrapped with twine to keep them from slipping, and one of its operators sanding the belt on the motor for the same reason." It crossed the finish line an hour and a half after Duryea had, though Mueller himself, who had fainted from all the excitement, was no longer at the wheel. The Macy’s Benz collided with a streetcar on the way to Evanston, then with a sleigh and never did finish. Neither did the De La Vergne Benz.

But the race had accomplished what Kohlstaadt had hoped it would. It introduced Americans to the motor-wagon and proved once and for all that the days of the horse and buggy were numbered.

For his part, Frank Duryea returned to his shop in Massachusetts and got to work. In 1896, the Duryeas built 13 cars by hand and thus they became the largest automobile factory in the United States.

(Photo; pinterest.com)
Frank Duryea died in Saybrook, Connecticut on February 15, 1967, aged 97. He was the last surviving member of the automotive industry's founding fathers.