This Day in Automotive History

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September 28, 1938
On September 28, 1938, inventor Charles Duryea dies in Philadelphia at the age of 76. Duryea and his brother Frank designed and built one of the first functioning “gasoline buggies,” or gas-powered automobiles, in the United States. For most of his life, however, Charles insisted on taking full credit for the brothers’ innovation. On the patent applications he filed for the Duryea Motor Wagon, for instance, Charles averred that he was the car’s sole inventor; he also loftily proclaimed that his brother was “simply a mechanic” hired to execute Charles’ plans.
Charles Duryea was not the inventor of the first gasoline engine, nor was he the first person to build a gas-powered car. Instead, as his obituary in the New York Times put it, he “had the rare mechanical wit to see how the contributions of his predecessors could be combined into a sound invention.” In 1886, Charles was working as a bicycle mechanic in Peoria when he received a jolt of inspiration from a gasoline engine he saw at a state fair. There was no reason, he thought, why such a motor could not be used to power a lightweight quadricycle. He spent seven years designing and redesigning his machine, a one-cylinder, four-horsepower, tiller-steered car with a water-cooled gas engine, a buggy body, and narrow metal oak-spoked wheels turned by bicycle chains. The car also had an electric ignition and a spray carburetor, both designed by Frank.
In September 1893, Frank Duryea took the finally-completed Motor Wagon out for its first official spin. He only managed to splutter about 600 feet down his block before the car’s friction-belt transmission failed, but even so, it was clear that the Duryea auto was a promising machine. It’s worth noting that Charles missed all this excitement: Frank and the car were in Springfield, Massachusetts, while the elder Duryea was fixing bikes in Peoria.
Two years later, on Thanksgiving Day, an improved Duryea Motor Wagon with pneumatic rubber tires won the first auto race in the United States. In 1896, the brothers built and sold 13 identical Duryeas, making theirs the first American company to manufacture more than one automobile at a time. After that, the brothers parted ways: Frank went on to build and sell the Stevens-Duryea Limousine, while Charles (“unable,” his Times obituary said, “to adapt himself to the public taste”) worked on designing less practical vehicles like tiller-steered mechanical tricycles.

September 28, 1978
Car & Driver Editor Don Sherman set a Class E record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah on this day, driving the Mazda RX7, the standard-bearer for the rotary engine in the U.S. market, and reaching 183.904mph. The RX7's unique rotary engine doesn't have the standard pistons, instead, two rounded "rotors" spin to turn the engine's flywheel. Although the rotary engine was not a new concept, the Mazda RX7 was one of the first to conquer the reliability issues faced by earlier rotary engines. Light and fun to drive, with 105hp from its 1.1 liter rotary engine, the RX7 was extremely popular.

September 28, 1982
Ford took a major step in overcoming its history of poor labor relations on this day, opening the joint UAW (United Auto Workers) and Ford National Development and Training Center. The center, located in Dearborn, Michigan, provides education and training to workers, as well as community programs. Workers can participate in any of six major programs, learning about everything from math skills to pension plans. More importantly, the center also offers relocation assistance and several unemployment programs for laid-off workers. Ford subsidizes the training center with grants and tuition assistance.

September 28, 1988
The Ahrens Fox Model AC fire engine had its 15 minutes of fame when the U.S. Postal Service featured the 1913 fire engine as part of its transportation series. The Ahrens-Fox Company was one of the most successful fire engine manufacturers in the country, thriving on the competition between volunteer fire companies that developed in the early twentieth century. These rivalries spurred ingenuity and innovation, as well as sales of fancy new fire-fighting equipment. The Model AC depicted on the stamp was bought by the town of San Angelo, Texas, for its fire department and featured new technology like the steam pump and chemical tank.

Ahrens Fox Model AC postage stamp

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

29th September

September 29, 1888
Daimler cars managed to make it to New York long before other imports due to an auto enthusiast named William Steinway. Steinway, concluded licensing negotiations with Gottlieb Daimler on this day, gaining permission to manufacture Daimler cars in the U.S. He founded the "Daimler Motor Company" and began producing Daimler engines, as well as importing Daimler boats, trucks, and other equipment to the North American market. Still, the U.S. was just a small portion of Daimler's market, and when he introduced a new line in 1901, he christened it Mercedes because he feared the German-sounding Daimler would not sell well.

September 29, 1908
William Durrant merged Buick, Oldsmobile (Lansing, MI) into General Motors. He also added Cadillac (Detroit) for $4.4 million cash, Oakland (Pontiac predecessor), dozens of parts suppliers (AC Spark Plug) into GM.

September 29, 1913
On this day in 1913, Rudolf Diesel, inventor of the engine that bears his name, disappears from the steamship Dresden while traveling from Antwerp, Belgium to Harwick, England. On October 10, a Belgian sailor aboard a North Sea steamer spotted a body floating in the water; upon further investigation, it turned out that the body was Diesel’s. There was, and remains, a great deal of mystery surrounding his death: It was officially judged a suicide, but many people believed that Diesel was murdered.
Diesel patented a design for his engine on February 28, 1892,; the following year, he explained his design in a paper called “Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine to Replace the Steam Engine and Contemporary Combustion Engine.” He called his invention a “compression ignition engine” that could burn any fuel--later on, the prototypes he built would run on peanut or vegetable oil--and needed no ignition system: It ignited by introducing fuel into a cylinder full of air that had been compressed to an extremely high pressure and was, therefore, extremely hot.
Such an engine would be unprecedentedly efficient, Diesel argued: In contrast to the other steam engines of the era, which wasted more than 90 percent of their fuel energy, Diesel calculated that his could be as much as 75 percent efficient. The most efficient engine that Diesel ever actually built had an efficiency of 26 percent--not quite 75 percent, but still much better than its peers.
By 1912, there were more than 70,000 diesel engines working around the world, mostly in factories and generators. Eventually, Diesel’s engine would revolutionize the railroad industry; after World War II, trucks and buses also started using diesel-type engines that enabled them to carry heavy loads much more economically.
At the time of Diesel’s disappearance , he was on his way to England to attend the groundbreaking of a new diesel-engine plant--and to meet with the British navy about installing his engine on their submarines. Conspiracy theories began to fly almost immediately: “Inventor Thrown Into the Sea to Stop Sale of Patents to British Government,” read one headline; another worried that Diesel was “Murdered by Agents from Big Oil Trusts.” It is likely that Diesel did throw himself overboard--as it turns out, he was nearly broke, but the mystery will probably never be solved.

September 29, 1983
Henry Ford II, grandson and namesake of Henry Ford, joined his grandfather today as a member of the Automotive Hall of Fame in Midland, Michigan. When he succeeded his father as president of the Ford Motor Company, the automotive giant was crumbling, losing several million dollars a month and mired in old-fashioned practices. Henry Ford II quickly set about modernizing the company and is often credited with its revitalization.

William Steinway


William Steinway's ad. for Mercedes Benz.


Rudolf Diesel

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

September 30, 1901
Compulsory car registration for all vehicles driving over 18mph took effect throughout France.

September 30, 1937
The Duesenberg were considered the most luxurious cars in the world, hand-crafted and custom-made, heeded as the epitome of flamboyance and elegance. Their clientele included the great, the near-great, the famous, and the infamous. For almost 10 years, Duesenbergs were acknowledged as the ultimate in quality and value, inspiring the expression "it's a duesy." However, this symbol of opulence suffered during the hard times of the Great Depression, and Duesenberg was forced to close its doors forever on this day.

September 30, 1955
At 5:45 PM on this day in 1955, 24-year-old actor James Dean is killed in Cholame, California, when the Porsche he is driving hits a Ford Tudor sedan at an intersection. The driver of the other car, 23-year-old California Polytechnic State University student Donald Turnupseed, was dazed but mostly uninjured; Dean’s passenger, German Porsche mechanic Rolf Wütherich was badly injured but survived. Only one of Dean’s movies, “East of Eden,” had been released at the time of his death (“Rebel Without a Cause” and “Giant” opened shortly afterward), but he was already on his way to superstardom--and the crash made him a legend.
James Dean loved racing cars, and in fact he and his brand-new, $7000 Porsche Spyder convertible were on their way to a race in Salinas, 90 miles south of San Francisco. Witnesses maintained that Dean hadn’t been speeding at the time of the accident--in fact, Turnupseed had made a left turn right into the Spyder’s path--but some people point out that he must have been driving awfully fast: He’d gotten a speeding ticket in Bakersfield, 150 miles from the crash site, at 3:30 p.m. and then had stopped at a diner for a Coke, which meant that he’d covered quite a distance in a relatively short period of time. Still, the gathering twilight and the glare from the setting sun would have made it impossible for Turnupseed to see the Porsche coming no matter how fast it was going.
Rumor has it that Dean’s car, which he’d nicknamed the Little *******, was cursed. After the accident, the car rolled off the back of a truck and crushed the legs of a mechanic standing nearby. Later, after a used-car dealer sold its parts to buyers all over the country, the strange incidents multiplied: The car’s engine, transmission and tires were all transplanted into cars that were subsequently involved in deadly crashes, and a truck carrying the Spyder’s chassis to a highway-safety exhibition skidded off the road, killing its driver. The remains of the car vanished from the scene of that accident and haven’t been seen since.
Wütherich, whose feelings of guilt after the car accident never abated, tried to commit suicide twice during the 1960s--and in 1967, he stabbed his wife 14 times with a kitchen knife in a failed murder/suicide--and he died in a drunk-driving accident in 1981. Turnupseed died of lung cancer in 1981.

1937 Duesenberg Sj number 397, The last Dusey


James Dean and his rare 1955 Porsche Spyder


James Dean's crash site.

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[jalex]

The 1937 Duesenberg Sj number 397 is an Elegant car,I guess it was under-rated back then.

 

[Landrover]

October 1, 1908
Beginning in 1903, Henry Ford and his engineers struggled for five difficult years to produce a reliable, inexpensive car for the mass market. It wasn't until their 20th attempt, christened the Model T after the 20th letter in the alphabet, that the fledgling Ford Motor Company hit pay dirt. On this day, the Ford Model T was introduced to the American public, and Ford's affordable revolution had begun. Affectionately known as the "Tin Lizzie," the Model T revolutionized the automotive industry by providing an affordable, reliable car for the average American. Ford was able to keep the price down by retaining control of all raw materials, and by employing revolutionary mass production methods. When it was first introduced, the "Tin Lizzie" cost only $850 and seated two people, and by the time it was discontinued in 1927, nearly 15,000,000 Model Ts had been sold.

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

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i was having difficulty posting images. and to post above line i had to wait 45 minutes. Guys do something. The site is constantly down. i cannot post in such situation.

 

[350Z]

i was having difficulty posting images. and to post above line i had to wait 45 minutes. Guys do something. The site is constantly down. i cannot post in such situation.

Please check your PM Inbox.

Drive Safe,
350Z

 

[Landrover]

October 2, 1947
On this day, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) formally established F1 racing in Grand Prix competition for the first time. Technological leaps made during World War II had rendered pre-war racing rules obsolete, so the Formula One guidelines were established in order to encompass the new type of racing, faster and more furious than anything the racing world had ever seen. Formula One was initiated for cars of 1,500cc supercharged and 4,500cc unsupercharged, and the minimum race distance was reduced from 500km to 300km, a change that allowed the famous Monaco Grand Prix to be reintroduced into official Grand Prix racing. In 1950, Giuseppe "Nino" Farina, driving an Alfa Romeo 158, won the first Formula One World Championship at the Silverstone British Grand Prix, and racing's most thrilling tradition was born.

October 2, 1948
On this day, law student Cameron Argetsinger's vision of bringing European style racing competition to the place where he spent his summer vacations became a reality. Under the guidance of Argetsinger and the Sports Car Club of America (SCCA), the village of Watkins Glen, located in the scenic New York Finger Lakes region, hosted its first automobile races along a challenging course that encompassed asphalt, cement, and dirt roads. It was the first post-World War II road race in the United States, and Frank Griswold, driving a 2.9 liter prewar Alfa Romeo, won both events offered, a 26.4-mile Junior Prix, and the 52.8-mile Grand Prix. Cameron Argetsinger competed as well, driving an MG-TC, but proved to be a better racing organizer than actual participant. The Watkins Glen Grand Prix went on to have a prestigious history as a racing venue, hosting a variety of premium racing events through the years.

October 2, 1959
On September 2, 1959, at a news conference broadcast to viewers in 21 cities on closed-circuit television, Henry Ford II introduces his company’s newest car--the 90-horsepower, 30 miles-per-gallon Falcon. The Falcon, dubbed “the small car with the big car feel,” was an overnight success. It went on sale that October 8 and by October 9, dealers had snapped up every one of the 97,000 cars in the first production run.
In 1959, each one of Detroit’s Big Three automakers began to sell a smaller, zippier, lower-priced car: Ford had the Falcon, while General Motors had the Corvair and Chevrolet had the Valiant. After years of building huge, gas-guzzling, lavishly be-finned cars, American companies entered the small-car market because European carmakers like Volkswagen, Fiat, and Renault were selling their little cars to American buyers by the thousands.

Cameron Reynolds Argetsinger

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

3rd October

October 3, 1912
In the first professional racing victory for a car fitted with a Duesenberg engine, race car driver Mortimer Roberts won the 220-mile Pabst Blue Ribbon Trophy Race, held in and around the village of Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. The engine was designed by Duesenberg brothers who had immigrated to Iowa from Germany in the late-nineteenth century. After honing his mechanical talents by repairing early automobiles, Frederick Duesenberg became enthralled with the prospect of motor racing, and with his brother August opened an automobile shop. After establishing their reputation with engines and other racing parts, the Duesenberg brothers began construction of the first complete Duesenberg racing cars. The first great racing triumph of one of their cars came in 1921 when a Duesenberg was driven to victory in the 24-Hour event at Le Mans, France. The mid-1920s found the Duesenbergs in the racing world's spotlight, especially at the Indy 500, where their cars won the event outright in 1924, 1925, and 1927. But the Duesenberg's most significant contribution to automotive history came after automobile manufacturer E.L. Cord bought Duesenberg Motors in 1926, with the sole purpose of obtaining the design expertise of Fred Duesenberg. Cord wanted to produce the most luxurious car in the world, and in 1928, the Duesenberg-designed Model J was presented, widely considered to be one of the finest automobiles ever made.

October 3, 1961
The United Auto Workers (UAW) called the first company-wide strike against Ford Motor Company since the Ford's first union contract was signed in 1941. During the late 1930s, Ford was the last of the Big Three auto firms still holding out against unionization, and it employed strong-arm tactics to suppress any union activity. In 1937, tension between Ford and its workers came to a head at the "Battle of the Overpass," an infamous event where Ford's dreaded security force beat union organizers attempting to pass out UAW leaflets along the Miller Road Overpass in Dearborn, Michigan. Several people were brutally beaten while many other union supporters, including 11 women, were injured in the melee that followed. It took four more years of struggle and a 10-day strike before Ford agreed to sign its first closed-shop contract with the UAW, covering 123,000 employees. The ascension of Henry Ford II, Henry Ford's grandson, to the Ford leadership position in 1945 brought a period of stability in Ford-UAW relations, especially after Henry Ford II fired the powerful Personnel Chief Harry Bennett, whose anti-union stance had made Ford notorious for its bad labor relations. But in 1961, negotiations between the Ford Motor Company and the UAW fell apart again, and it took 17 days of striking before a tenuous three-year agreement was signed.

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

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4th October

October 4, 1946
Berna Eli "Barney" Oldfield, an automobile racer and pioneer died on this day at the age of 68. He was the first man to drive a car at 60 miles per hour (96 km/h). His accomplishments led to the expression "Who do you think you are? Barney Oldfield?"

October 4, 1983
Sarah Marie Fisher, an American professional race car driver competing in the IndyCar Series was born in Columbus, Ohio. She was the youngest woman to compete in the Indianapolis 500 at age 19 in 2000.

October 4, 1983
After nearly 20 years of domination by Americans, British racer Richard Noble raced to a new one-mile land-speed record in his jet-powered Thrust 2 vehicle. The Thrust 2, a 17,000-pound jet-powered Rolls-Royce Avon 302 designed by John Ackroyd, reached a record 633.468mph over the one-mile course in Nevada's stark Black Rock Desert, breaking the 631.367mph speed record achieved by Gary Gabelich's Blue Flame in 1970. Previous to Gary Gabelich there was Craig Breedlove, the American driver who recorded a series of astounding victories in jet-powered vehicles during the 1960s, breaking the 400mph, 500mph, and 600mph barriers in 1963, 1964, and 1965, respectively. In 1997, Breedlove and Noble returned to Black Rock Desert again, this time in a race to break the elusive 700mph barrier. On September 25, team leader Noble watched as British fighter pilot Andy Green set a new land-speed record in their Thrust SSC vehicle, jet-powering to an impressive 714.144mph over the one-mile course. But the greatest victory for the British team came on October 13 of that same year, when Andy Green roared across Black Rock Desert at 764.168mph, or 1.007 percent above the speed of sound. Appropriately, the first shattering of the sound barrier by a land vehicle came on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the first supersonic flight, achieved by American pilot Chuck Yeager in 1947.

October 4, 1992
Denis Clive "Denny" Hulme, a New Zealand car racer who won the 1967 Formula One World Champion for the Brabham team died on this day, While competing in Bathurst 1000, held at the famous Mount Panorama track in Australia.
In the 1992 event he was sharing a Benson & Hedges-sponsored BMW M3 with Paul Morris. After complaining of blurred vision Hulme suffered a massive heart attack at the wheel whilst travelling part the way down the 200-mph Conrod Straight. After veering into the wall on the right side of the track, he managed to bring the car to a relatively controlled stop sliding against the safety railing and concrete wall. When marshals reached the scene they found Hulme still strapped in, dead.

Richard Noble with his Thrust 2

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

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October 5, 1919
On October 5, 1919, a young Italian car mechanic and engineer named Enzo Ferrari takes part in his first car race, a hill climb in Parma, Italy. He finished fourth. Ferrari was a good driver, but not a great one: In all, he won just 13 of the 47 races he entered. Many people say that this is because he cared too much for the sports cars he drove: He could never bring himself to ruin an engine in order to win a race.
In the mid-1920s, Ferrari retired from racing cars in order to pursue his first love: building them. He took over the Alfa Romeo racing department in 1929 and began to turn out cars under his own name. Annoyed with Ferrari's heavy-handed management style, Alfa Romeo fired him in 1939. After that, he started his own manufacturing firm, but he spent the war years building machine tools, not race cars.
In 1947, the first real Ferraris appeared on the market at last. That same year, Ferrari won the Rome Grand Prix, his first race as an independent carmaker. In 1949, a Ferrari won the Le Mans road race for the first time and in 1952 one of the team's drivers, Alberto Ascari, became the world racing champion: He won every race he entered that year.
That decade was Ferrari's most triumphant: Year after year, his cars dominated the field, winning eight world championships and five Grand Prix championships. Ferrari won so much because his cars were ruthless. They were bigger and stronger than everyone else's and (in part to compensate for their excess weight) they had much more powerful engines. He also ensured success by flooding races with his cars and by hiring the boldest, most daredevil drivers he could find. Unfortunately, this combination of reckless drivers and heavy, superpowered cars was a recipe for tragedy: Between 1955 and 1965, six of Ferrari's 20 drivers were killed in crashes and on five different occasions his cars careened into crowds of spectators, killing 50 bystanders in all. (In 1957, Ferrari was even tried for manslaughter after one of these bloody wrecks, but he was acquitted.)
Ferrari tended to scorn technological advances that he did not come up with himself, so he was slow to accept things like disc brakes, rear-mounted engines and fuel-injection systems. As a result, the stranglehold his cars had on races around the world began to loosen. Still, by the time he died in 1988, Ferrari cars had won more than 4,000 races.
Unique thing about Enzo is that he used to build and sell his car so that he could race. Unlike other who enter racing to sell their cars.

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

October 6, 1888
William Steinway, car enthusiast, son of Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (Henry Steinway, piano manufacturer), acquired licensing rights from Gottlieb Daimler to manufacture Daimler cars in U.S. He founded the "Daimler Motor Company", began producing Daimler engines, importing Daimler boats, trucks, other equipment to North American market.

October 6, 1926
Duesenberg Company was incorporated into the Auburn-Cord company. Frederick (design) and August Duesenberg began working toward E L. Cord's dream of the ultimate luxury automobile.

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

October 7, 1913
Ford introduced continuously moving assembly line to assemble chassis in Highland Park automobile factory, assembly was divided into 29 operations performed by 29 men spaced along moving belt. This systems reduced man-hours to complete one "Model T" from 12 1/2 hours to six (reduced to 93 man-minutes in a year; eventually, one Model T produced every 24 seconds), drastically reduce the cost of the Model T, made car affordable to ordinary consumers.

October 7, 1960
On October 7, 1960, the first episode of the one-hour television drama "Route 66" airs on CBS. The program had a simple premise: It followed two young men, Buz Murdock and Tod Stiles, as they drove across the country in an inherited Corvette (Chevrolet was one of the show's sponsors), doing odd jobs and looking for adventure. According to the show's creator and writer, Stirling Silliphant, Buz and Tod were really on a journey in search of themselves.
"Route 66" was different from every other show on television. For one thing, it was shot on location all over the United States instead of in a studio. By the time its run was up in 1964, the show's cast and crew had traveled from Maine to Florida and from Los Angeles to Toronto: In all, they taped 116 episodes in 25 states. (Silliphant himself arrived at all the show's locations six weeks before anyone else. When he got there, he would acquaint himself with local culture and write the scripts on-site.) The show was a serious drama with social-realist pretensions, but its nomadic premise meant that it could tackle a new issue--war, mental illness, religion, murder, drug addiction, drought--every week. By contrast, police procedurals and hospital dramas necessarily had a more limited range. The show's stark black-and-white cinematography was likewise suited to its serious tone.
The real Route 66 was a two-lane highway that ran from Chicago to Los Angeles. From its completion in the late 1930s, it was one of the major routes across the American Southwest. It was also probably the most famous: John Steinbeck called it the "Mother Road" in his book "The Grapes of Wrath," and Nat King Cole's version of songwriter Bobby Troup's 1946 song "(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66" is still familiar to many people today.
In 1993, NBC developed a peppier, less gritty remake of the show--in fact, about the only thing the two "Route 66"s had in common was the Corvette--but it went off the air after just a few episodes.

October 7, 1976
Marc Coma, Spanish motorcycle racer was born in Avià, Barcelona He won the Dakar Rally in 2006 riding a KTM motorcycle. He is also the World Champion in the Rallies Cross Country Motorcycles Tournament in 2005, 2006 and 2007.

October 7, 2007
Norifumi "Norick" Abe, a Japanese Moto GP racer died in a traffic accident while riding a 500 cc Yamaha T-Max scooter in Kawasaki, Kanagawa. He collided with a truck, which made an illegal U-turn in front of him, at 6:20pm local time. He was pronounced dead two and a half hours later at 8:50pm at the hospital where he was taken for treatment.

Ford Assembly Line

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

October 8, 1869
On this day in 1869, the inventor and mechanic Frank Duryea is born on a farm in Washburn, Illinois. When Duryea was just 24 years old, he and his older brother, Charles, designed and built the Duryea Motor Wagon, one of the first successful gas-powered motor vehicles in the United States. Ever since then, there has been a great deal of disagreement over exactly which brother was responsible for the invention of the Motor Wagon. Because he outlived Charles by almost 80 years, Frank had the last word. Until the day he died in February 1967, the younger Duryea brother insisted that the pioneering automobile was entirely his own creation (except, that is, for the troublesome steering tiller that never worked quite correctly).
What is beyond dispute is that Frank Duryea was the first automobile driver on the American road. In September 1893, he was behind the wheel as the Duryea car made its first successful trip, 600 yards down his street in Springfield, Massachusetts. When he tried to turn the corner, the Motor Wagon's transmission blew; however, Frank managed to patch it back together and putter down the road for another half-mile or so.
In September 1895 the two brothers organized the first car company in the United States, the Duryea Motor Wagon Company, to build and sell their gas-powered contraptions. On Thanksgiving Day of that year, in a brilliant promotional stunt, Frank won the country's first automobile race, the Chicago Times-Herald race from Chicago to Evanston. (The race unfolded despite an enormous snowstorm that made the roads nearly impassable; still, Frank managed to complete the 50-mile loop in a little more than 10 hours.)
Frank left the Duryea Motor Wagon Company in 1899 and two years later he helped start the Stevens-Duryea Company, another auto manufacturing concern in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. He retired in 1915 and spent the rest of his days living comfortably in Connecticut, traveling, gardening and puttering around his workshop.

October 8, 1955
William Clyde Elliott most famously known as Bill Elliot was born in Dawsonville, Georgia. Elliott was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America on August 15, 2007. He won the 1988 NASCAR Winston Cup Championship and has garnered 44 wins in that series.

Bill Elliot

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

9th October

October 9, 1915
Racer Gil Anderson set a new auto speed record on the opening day of races at the Sheepshead Bay Speedway, located in Brooklyn, New York. Driving a Stutz automobile, Anderson achieved an average speed of 102.6mph over a 350-mile course, breaking the 100mph barrier while setting a new speed record for such a distance. Anderson was participating in the celebrated Vincent Astor Cup event, an annual auto race that attracted thousands of auto enthusiasts to Sheepshead Bay for several decades.

October 9, 1992
On this day, thousands of people in the Eastern United States witnessed an above-average-size meteorite enter the Earth's atmosphere with a sonic boom, and burst into flames as it streaked across the sky over several states. Photographed and videotaped by over a dozen people, the fireball flew over an open football stadium before crashing into Peekskill, New York, a small city 50 miles north of New York City. The 30 pound, football-size meteorite struck a 1980 Chevy Malibu parked in a driveway, penetrating the trunk of the car and missing the gas tank by inches. The owner of the totaled automobile reportedly expressed wonder at the fact that an object in orbit around the sun for millions of years ended up in the trunk of his Chevy, but worried if his insurance would cover the damage.


Andersen's No.28 car (second from left), preparing for the 1916 Indy500 race.


Chevy Malibu's trunk (Credit & copyright: Pierre Thomas)




Video Link of Meteorite
fireball, meteorite, bolide en video et photo : Video Peekskill

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​

 

[Landrover]

October 10, 1930
Eugenio Castellotti was born in Lodi, Italy. He used to race for Ferari and later for Lancia. Castellotti was considered the greatest Italian driver after Alberto Ascari.

October 10, 1948
Ted Horn, an American race car driver was involved in a serious accident at DuQuoin, Illinois during the second lap. He was taken to the hospital alive but died a short time later. He was 38. He was inducted in the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1993.

October 10, 1974
Ralph Dale Earnhardt, Jr., a NASCAR driver was born in Kannaplois, North Carolina. He currently drives the #88 AMP Energy/National Guard Chevrolet Impala SS in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series for Hendrick Motorsports.

Eugenio Castellotti

Source:
The History Channel
Wikipedia​