A 1993 Mazda Protege, a race with a Mustang, and a Near Miss with a Cop -- a story from Zach Morris

A 1993 Mazda Protege -- nice inexpensive rides, but expensive to fix!

Zach Morris
HST 344-61
Professor Heitmann
14 May 2010
She Was Never Much but She Was Mine
There are a few people that have never been in a motor vehicle accident. My mother is one. I, on the other hand, have been in more than I can even remember. They range from the fault of others to the responsibility resting on my shoulders. They also range from 100cc motorcycles to city buses that were my method of transport until a car, pole, or dog got in the way. No groundhogs though; they’d be a hood ornament before anything. Some accidents are fun to sit back and chuckle about; one that was years ago still makes me thankful to be alive.
That is not what comes to mind, however, when writing an auto-biography. My car does. The gun-metal grey 1993 Mazda Protegé was my first car. Actually second, but the Audi 5000 Turbo Diesel was only mine for a month or two, and no that car did not fall into the wrecked category. I digress. The car was nothing special to any person other than me. Well, that is not fair to say, because the previous owner took very good care of it. No fancy paint, no obnoxious stereo, no fancy rims; just four and a stick.
I had the car for all of two or three days when coming towards I-675 on Wilmington-Dayton Road (most would know it as Wilmington Pike but south of 725 in Bellbrook it is still Wilmington-Dayton—it’s a Greene County thing) I got stuck in a jam coming up the hill just north of Centerville Station. It is no monstrous hill, but to a teenager learning to drive a manual transmission it was a formidable challenge. Still, only stalled it two or three times! This was stop and go traffic on a thirty to forty degree incline for at least 200 yards and my third day (we’ll say for benefit of the doubt) driving a stick. After that day the Protegé and I were mates.
Hands down the best story it ever gave me was a highway race on I-71. The year was 2,000 of our lord (just added that for effect). Buzzing along at a respectable 70-75mph, a car rushed up my backside. Given the opportunity I merged right to let it pass. Instead this car gets behind me and proceeds to ride my back some more. Frustrated by something that had taken me from Dayton back to Cincy for the evening, I slung into a wide open far right lane. The same time this S.O.B. that was riding me, a new model Mustang with second most recent body style, shot into the left lane. It was on! I threw old Betsy (a pet name from time to time—she wasn’t pretty but she was mine all mine) into forth at 70. That is not kind to a normal factory four-cylinder. Still my car took it. Reaching 100 in fourth-gear my car was pleading for fifth and thanked me with a smooth transition when I granted the cry. Anyone familiar with Cincinnati knows that south of I-275 there are a few turns in the interstate as it weaves through the hills. As I pleasingly pulled away from the new and slick Mustang, the Protegé crested a hill going into a turn. The car went into a drift! Smoothly at about 105, the car took the turn as the feel of a loose back end mixed fear and pleasure in my blood. Know that any kind of a controlled, or even semi-controlled, drift in a front-wheel care is an impressive feat.
The Mustang was now several distances behind, nothing to worry about. Until removing my eyes from a quick glance in the rearview, I saw a Sheriff in my lane and I was closing fast—for once. This is not as enjoyable as I may have led it to sound. A couple panicked pumps on the breaks jolted the car and loosened up the back end even more, but remember this is a great story not one of the accidents. In a moment my vision of the car went from being able to read Sheriff to reading “Grad DUI” on his plate. He panicked too; thank God, because I probably would have hit him. Chance luck there was an exit there to which he swerved into the fourth right lane. He braked. I braked. Again. There was no way he was getting behind me. Finally, he was forced to commit to the exit. I knew he would just go up to the traffic light, flip his lights on, and then come after me. Not that day. It was the exit just north of the 562 Norwood Lateral and an exit only! Chalk the one and only up for Zach.
That car has been gone for years now, but just as the memory of an old flame may creep unwantingly into your heart and you refuse to expel it for the brief joy it brings. So too does old Betsy show up from time to time in my daydreams.

Marie Costanian's "Auto-Biography" -- this is one you don't want to miss!!

This is a 1984 Caprice Wagon - the best photo I could find

Believe it or not, this 1986 Dodge Caravan is in the Smithsonian Institution! Not, Marie's family, however!

University of Dayton
Cars I have cherished
Quiz 1







Marie Costanian
5/14/2010


Cars are not appliances, from my experiences, I have fond memories growing up and spending time in an automobile. My car experiences represent an incubator of who I have become today because of my experiences as a child in a woody wagon, and my first car, a minivan.


I have many memories of two very special near and dear cars to me. The first family vehicle I cherished was my dad’s woody wagon. It was a 1982 light blue Chevy caprice station wagon, and it was a lot of fun to ride in. It was the cool car to ride in; all the neighborhood kids loved riding in the back seat that faces in the opposite direction of the direction of travel, because it always made us sick. The second car was my very first car, a 1986 Dodge caravan!

Whenever we travelled long distances, we always took the woody wagon, case in point, when my family travelled 19 hours to get to a beach in New York for our family vacations. I have a few stories to share with this woody wagon. During family vacations to New York in the wagon, my parents always made a large spot in the wagon, and covered it with sheets so my brother could sleep the majority of the way. It was fun lying in the back of the wagon, listening to my cd player, and being comfortable too! If there was a chance that there wasn’t enough room to share in the back, my brother and I had to split who got the back during the first half and second half. It was fun going really fast in the wagon, passing people on the left and right, and being able to stare at them. My brother and I made signs and would put them to the windows to see people’s reactions, and of course my parents could not see what we were doing so they wouldn’t know why we were laughing. My parents would even take our bikes and put them on the roof, so we could ride our bikes whenever we went to rest stops.

A second fond memory I have of this wagon is whenever we drove on 675 S, and took exit 4, the Dayton Mall exit. At the exit ramp, it was literally a ramp, my dad would speed up at the intersection whenever we had the green light and no one was in front of us, and with the increased speed and the huge bump in the road, the car would lift off of the ground! It was so much fun being in mid air, it always gave my brother and I the butterflies, and we’d talk about it all day with our friends. Their parents weren’t as fun as ours, so they were always jealous of our car rides to the Dayton mall. My dad got a kick out of it too, he loved making my brother and I happy, and he knew how to do it well.

The second car I absolutely loved was my very first car, a 1986 Dodge Caravan, Sally, given to me the day I got my license! It was a beauty, I absolutely loved this car. It was old, and it was a dinger, but it was mine and it was huge. The day after I got my license, I had 8 girls in my car as we drove all through Kettering. At the time, Kettering hospital, Kettering middle school, and the Green was renovating so we borrowed construction barrels, cones, speed signs, and handicap signs to go and show appreciation to our seniors on the field hockey team! It was exhilarating, I drove, they would jump out of the car, grab as many borrowed items as they could, shoved them in the seats and trunk as I positioned the car to make a quick escape. I drove cautiously, and fast to get away! I had the radio blasting, and we were all having a great time! We decorated many seniors houses, 3 that night, and they all got 6 cones, 3 barrels, and 1 speed sign each. We teepeed, streamerd, and we confettitied their yards and rooms. It was the tradition before every Fairmont vs. Oakwood senior appreciation rival game. I loved every second of getting to drive my car, with that many friends, and that much crap we were able to shove in there to decorate our senior’s houses.

I even drove through the Wendy’s drive thru on Stroop backwards, meaning driving in reverse and the passenger having to order! When we pulled up to the window to pick up our order, the person was amazed, and called all the workers to see the sight, that we were backwards. Getting out of the drive thru was no a challenge at all, all I did was wait until no car was coming and pull out in reverse and put the car into drive and drive off.

Another bonus to Sally was that she could be heard from a mile away. Her engine was loud, and she was known to purr when she was accelerated! However, the all time kicker is that she had a horn that went “AAAA-WOOOOOO-GA”, and oh boy did I use it often. She was even in our schools paper! She was featured as a dinger, and pictures of the duct tape on the torn driver seat were taken too. My car was an all time hit at Fairmont high school, and definitely with my friends.

Sally was the best car since slice bread. She got me and all my friends everywhere I needed to be, and then some. I love this car, it’s a shame we sold it off, but I will never forget my high school memories in my car. I went everywhere and I could take everyone with me too. I felt free and in charge, confident I could go anywhere safely in Sally. I was free; free to drive the roads like adults, free to go get fast food if I didn’t want my parent’s food, free to go to friends houses that were across Kettering, and free to go to movies late at night. When I have kids that will be able to drive, I will also let them enjoy driving an old minivan so they can experience what I did when I was younger. If it wasn’t for Sally, then I don’t think high school would have been as fun as it was. I don’t think I would have liked it as much.

Automobiles are more than appliances; I think I was shaped by some of my experiences I had in my car. I know how to have fun and be careful by observing laws. I enjoyed being able to have many friends in my van, because of the things we would laugh and talk about. It was my personal space, and people enjoyed being in it. If I still had my van, I probably would still drive it, even though it only got 15 miles per gallon. I have many memories in my van, and I don’t think I would be the same if it were another vehicle that was smaller. Since it was a non-traditional car (old, and a dinger) I could do whatever I wanted with it. I loved that car, I love all the memories I had in that car, and I treasure all the moments I got to spend with my friends in the car. Not many people can say they could legally fit 8 people in a car, and not all of them can say they did the crazy things I did in my car. Parents who gave their children new cars did not allow their children to drive everywhere and do crazy stunts like borrowing traffic cones because they did not want any bumps, scratches, interior blemishes, or any fast food in the car. I didn’t vacuum every day, but it wasn’t messy or has trash in it either. It was my car, it was my job to clean it, and it was there for my convenience. My convenience was to have as much fun as I could; therefore it deserved to be treated with care. My dad taught me how to care of Sally, and my responsibilities were to always check and change the oil, clean the interior, and ensure the tires were properly inflated. My dad did any mechanical repairs if needed, which was never! I loved this car, and I still cherish it to this day. It always brings back great memories of my past. I believe this car incubated a little bit of who I am today. Every time people heard my car, they knew it was me coming, and then when they me, they would beg me to blow the horn.

Off the record:
I was able to do all this because my parents trusted me. They trusted my responsibility and saw my character through my incredible grades in school. They knew I was a safe driver because of how I was as a person; I respected them, and listened to them all the time. I told my parent’s everything I was doing. I hope this doesn’t make them sound like horrible parents because they weren’t; they were and still are incredible. Although I did do the senior appreciation decorating, I was disciplined by my parents for borrowing all the traffic items, and on top of that I had to start paying for my own gas. My parents did know that I had 8 girls in the van, and they were fine by that because of how well I did when I drove with them for my temps, and for driver’s school. It wasn’t until senior year where I had to start paying for insurance and that was a responsibility my parents wanted me to have to be able to understand that my education was important because it would get me a good job that would allow me to pay for bills in the future.

Joe Terrano, a 1999 Camry, and a Road Trip He Won't Forget!!

A Camry not terribly different from Joe's!

Auto-Biography—The “Horatio” of 2010 in a ‘99 Toyota Camry
Joe Terrano
The second semester of my sophomore year of college at The University of Dayton I decided to take a break from classes and accept a co-op position 21 hours away in Houston, Texas. It was quite the adventure for me because I had never been that far away from home for an extended period of time. Growing up in Cleveland, OH, I had always shared a car with my brother, so I never thought of my car solely as my own. If a problem were to occur, my Dad was right there to fix it. Everything from changing the oil and rotating the tires to replacing the transmission and tie rods, he always took superior care of our vehicle. After arriving in Houston, I knew that I needed a reliable car to get to and from work. I invested in a beige, 1999 Toyota Camry with 130,000 miles on it. It wasn’t the flashiest car on the streets, but it was very reliable while I was driving around Houston. This wouldn’t exactly be the case for the return home, when a series of unfortunate and unforeseen events would occur.
After my co-op term was over at the beginning of May, I had to gather my belongings and return to my home in Cleveland to prepare for summer classes. This was a 21.5 hour adventure that I would have to undertake alone. I did have a roommate that lived about 2.5 hours away from my hometown, so the original plan was to caravan the whole way. In theory, this was a wonderful idea, but there was only one problem. We both had different GPS devices, which ended up taking us completely different routes. We left Houston at about 6:30 at night, with the plan of driving through the night. We ended up losing each other at about 9:30 in Louisiana, where his GPS took him further east, while mine directed me north. It was pitch black, so initially we had no idea we were separated. It was only when I encountered torrential downpours in Tennessee and he didn’t when we realized we were separated.
On the night of May 1nd and into the early morning of May 2nd, 2010, the state of Tennessee came across some of the fastest rainfall in their history. I had the pleasure of driving through these storms at 1 in the morning. Each radio station that I tuned into for about 10 hours had flash flood and severe thunderstorm warnings until noon the next day. It was at this time that I needed to make a decision. Should I pull over and get a motel, or should I keep going. At this point, I could barely keep my eyes open, and the only thing that kept me from driving off the road at times were the ragged edges of the road which woke me out of the sudden dozes that I had. When this happened, I made sure to turn the AC in the car on to keep myself awake. After going back and forth on whether or not to stop overnight, I decided to keep going for a couple reasons. First of all, I wanted to just get home. Secondly, the explosive thunder blasts, electrifying lightning bolts and torrential rains helped keep me awake. But most importantly, I didn’t want to get caught in a flood.
This turned out to be a great choice. The water built up on the roads as I skidded through them in the early morning hours. My engine skipped like a horse from all the water that the semi trucks were spitting up as I passed them. Unfortunately, as I passed one of the semis a rock was thrown up from one of their tires and put a massive shatter and crack through my windshield. After 22 hours and several Red Bulls, I arrived home. My family was shocked to see me so quickly and wanted to hear my stories, but the only thing I wanted was a couch or bed. I collapsed down on the couch and put the TV on. The major national headline on the news was the horrific floods that destroyed Nashville and the state of Tennessee. Thankfully, I decided to keep going exclusively on energy drinks.
I later found out that my roommate that I was supposed to be caravanning with didn’t encounter any storms on the way home, and he also drove straight through. This gave me a strong animosity towards my GPS system. When driving from Houston to Cleveland, you need to go either north than east, or east than north. My GPS took me north than east and took me right into all the storms. If I would’ve gone east than north, I would have avoided almost all the rain. It is funny how while you are driving through weather like that, you start swearing at your appliances as if they were going to respond and make everything okay. It isn’t really important whether they deserve this hatred or not, anything that is going to happen will happen no matter what. Their feelings won’t be hurt if you have hatred towards them, and they will not be fascinated if you love them. However, it is important to take care of your vehicle, but to go as far as saying that you love it is a little extreme. As for the windshield of my car, I had to get that completely replaced, which set me back a good 500 dollars. If I were to go back and redo my drive, I would have definitely checked the weather first as well as printed off a map of the course so I had a better idea which way I was going.

A Select Bibliography of Books on the Automobile and American Life, S-Z

Saal, Thomas F. Famous But Forgotten: the Story of Alexander Winton, Automotive Pioneer and Industrialist. Twinsburg, OH: Golias Publishing, 1997.
Sachs, Wolfgang. For Love of the Automobile: Looking Back into the History of Our Desires. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992.
Scharff, Virginia. Taking the Wheel: Women and the Coming of the Motor Age. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
Schneider, Kenneth. Autokind vs. Mankind: An Analysis of Tyranny, a Proposal for Rebellion, a Plan for Reconstruction. New York: Schocken Books, 1972.
Sedgwick, Michael. Early Cars. London: Octopus Books, 1962.
Seely, Bruce E. Building the American Highway System: Engineers as Policy Makers. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987.
Setright, L. J. K. Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car. London: Granta Books, 2003.
Sherman, Joe. In the Rings of Saturn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Sinclair, Upton. The Flivver King. Emmaus, PA; Rodale Press, 1937.
Sloan, Alfred P. Adventures of a White Collar-Man. New York: Doubleday, Doran, 1941.
------. My Years With General Motors. Garden City, NJ: Doubleday & Company, 1964.
Smith, George David. Wisdom from the Robber Barons: Enduring Business Lessons from Rockefeller, Morgan, and the First Industrialists. Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 2000.
Sorenson, Charles E. My Forty Years with Ford. New York: Norton, 1956.
Stanford, Don. The Red Car. Cutchogue, NY: Buccaneer Books, 1954.
Steacy, Ken. Brightwork: Classic American Car Ornamentation. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1999.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Viking, 1939.
Steinwedel, Louis William, and J. Herbert Newport. The Duesenberg. New York: Norton, 1982.
Swope, Mary, and Walter H. Kerr, eds. American Classic: Car Poems for Collectors. College Park, MD: SCOP Eight, 1986.
Tarkington, Booth. The Magnificent Ambersons. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1918.
Tedlow, Richard. New and Improved: The Story of Mass Marketing in America. New York: Basic Books, 1990.
Thompson, Mickey with Griffith Borgeson. Challenger. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall 1965.
Vargas, Zaragosa. Proletarians of the North: A History of Mexican Industrial Workers in Detroit and the Midwest, 1917-1933. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Vatter, Harold G. The U.S. Economy in the 1950s. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Vlasic, Bill, and Bradley A. Stertz. Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off with Chrysler. New York: HarperCollins, 2000.
Volti, Rudi. Cars & Culture: The Life Story of a Technology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004.
Wallace, Max. The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich. New York: St. Martins, 2003.
Wallis, Michael. Route 66: The Mother Road. New York: St. Martin’s 2001.
------, and Michael S. Williamson. The Lincoln Highway: The Great American Road Trip. New York: Norton, 2007.
Walton, Mary. Car: A Drama of the American Workplace. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
Ward, James A. The Fall of the Packard Motor Car Company. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995.
Watkins, Julian L. The 100 Greatest Advertisements: Who Wrote Them and What They Did. New York: Dover Publications, 1959.
Watts, Steven. The People’s Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century. New York: Knopf, 2005.
Weibe, Robert. The Search for Order, 1877-1920. New York: Hall and Wang, 1967.
Wells, A. Wade. Hail to the Jeep. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1946.
White, Lawrence J. The Automobile Industry Since 1945. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971.
------. The Regulation of Air Pollutant Emissions from Motor Vehicles. Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 1982.
Whitney, Albert. Man and the Motor Car. New York, 1936.
Whyte, Adam Gowns. Electricity in Locomotion: An Account of its Mechanism, its Achievements, and its Prospects. Cambridge: University Press, 1911.
Wik, Reynold M. Henry Ford and Grass-Roots America. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1972.
Wilkinson. Stephan. The Gold-Plated Porsche: How I Sank a Small Fortune into a Used Car, and other Misadventures. Guilford, CT: Lyons, 2004.
Williams, T. Harry. Huey Long. New York: Knopf, 1970.
Williamson, Harold F. et al. The American Petroleum Industry, 1899-1959: The Age of Energy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1963.
Williamson, Judith. Decoding Advertisements: Ideology and Meaning in Advertising. London: Boyars, 1978.
Witzel, Michael Karl. Route 66 Remembered. Oscelola, WI: Motorbooks, 1996.
Wixom, Charles W. A Pictorial History of Road Building. Washington, D.C.: American Road Builder’s Association, 1975.
Wolfe, Tom. The Kandy-Kolored Tangerine Flake Streamline Baby. New York, Vintage, 2005.
------. The Electric Kool-Aid Test. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1968.
Wollen, Peter, and Joe Kerr, eds. Autopia: Cars and Culture. London: Reaktion, 2002.
Womack, James P., Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos. The Machine that Changed the World. New York: Rawson Associates, 1990.
Wright, J. Patrick. On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors. Grosse Pointe, MI: Wright Enterprises, 1979.
Yates, Brock. The Critical Path: Inventing an Automobile and Reinventing a Corporation. Boston: Little, Brown, 1996.
Yergin, Daniel. The Prize. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1991.
Young, Rosamond McPherson. Boss Ket: A Life of Charles F. Kettering. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1961.
Zeder, Fred Morrell. Leadership: A Message to America. New York: Newcomen Society, 1947.

Automobile Racing in 1911 -- Commerical Murder? Quotes from Barney Oldfield

Spectators run for cover as Pullen, driving a Mercer, loses a wheel at 'death curve' during the Vanderbilt Cup Race at Santa Monica.

Barney Oldfield and an airplane

Automobile Racing in 1911 -- Commerical Murder? Quotes from Barney Oldfield

Hi folks -- as I am beginning to get into the history of autoracing, one topic emerges as quite interesting -- the controversy over auto racing as a blood sport. I'll be following through on this stand in the weeks ahead, but wanted to give you a taste of the issues.

On September 16, 1911 a race automobile plowed through a crowd in Syracuse New York and killed ten people. In an article subsequently published in Outlook on September 30, 1911, the author used quotes from racer Barney Oldfield (from an article of his in Popular Science) to make the point that racing takes too many lives.
The following are quotes from Oldfield on auto racing as a blood sport:

"It has taken ten years to prove this…It has been a decade replete with black headlines and black mourning."
"I was never famous until I went through the fence at St. Louis and killed two spectators. Promoters fell over one another to sign me up."
"It is the call of the Roman arena, of the Spanish bull-ring. It is no more a sport than a hanging is a sport. It used to be called "instructive," "developing," useful," but that day is long past.
"In the recent race at Indianapolis, where the crowd's lust was satisfied by a black tangle of shattered men and machines, nineteenths of the entries were made against the desires of the manufacturers."
The simple fact is that automobile racing has ceased to have a business end, and ahs become a mere game, an entertainment in which business has little part."
"No, if automobile racing is to be perpetuated, it must be through the interest of the public. How large is this interest? Immense; but so was the interest in cock-fighting, in bull baiting, in prize-fights, in gladiatorial contests. So it is yet in the Mexican bull-fight, where in the sport's name they kill cattle instead of human beings. All of these have passed or are just passing. Modern humanity will not permit them. The Morbid cry for blood still lives in a few, but the many cry for mercy."
"Speed madness is one thing; blood madness is another."
"The American grows sentimental about killing cattle; the Mexican prefers cattle to human beings. It is merely a matter of taste."
"I never realized my foolishness on any of these occasions until I was in the hospital with doctors standing around and nurses looking serious."
"While the body of Basle still lay beside his machine, women tried to cut off pieces of his clothing as a souvenir…On the day after Basle's death then thousand persons fought for front seats at the track."

W.K. Vanderbilt and the Land Speed Record -- The Early Years

Ormond-Daytona Beach, 1905. W.K. Vanderbilt, A. MacDonald and H. T. Thomas

From G.E.T. Eyston, Fastest on Earth. Los Angeles: Clymer, 1946, pp.173-4.


The Land Speed Record



Date Place Driver Car M.P.H.
18.12.98 Achères Chasseloup-Laubat Jeantaud (electric) 39.24
17.1.99 Achères Jenatzy Jenatzy (electric) 41.42
17.1.99 Achères Chasseloup-Laubat Jeantaud (electric) 43.69
27.1.99 Achères Jenatzy Jeanatzy (electric) 49.92
4.3.99 Achères Chasseloup-Laubat Jeantaud (electric) 57.6
29.4.99 Achères Jeneatzy Jeanatzy (electric) 65.79
9.4.02 Achères C.S. Rolls Mors 63.1
9.4.02 Achères W.K. Vanderbilt Mercedes-Simplex 65.79
13.4.02 Nice Serpollet Serpollet (Steam) 75.06
21.4.02 Ablis W.K. Vanderbilt Mercedes-Simplex 67.78
5.02 Ablis W.K. Vanderbilt Mercedes-Simplex 69.04
7.02 Bruges P. de Caters Mors 75.06
5.8.02 Ablis W.K. Vanderbilt Mors 76.08
5.11.02 Dourdan Fournier Mors 76.60
17.11.02 Dourdan Augières Mors 77.13
7.3.03 Clipstone C.S. Rolls Mors 82.84

Of the early U.S. race drivers, perhaps no one stands out more than William Kissam Vanderbilt II, affectionately known as "Willie K." His activities reflect important themes related to first decade of auto racing, one in which society's upper crust played a dominant role in the story of the automobile in American life.
Born in New York City in 1878 to William Kissam Vanderbilt , he was thus was called Vanderbilt Jr. until the death of his father. Growing up in luxury, raised in Vanderbilt mansions, experiencing European travel at an early age, and sailing around the globe in his father's yachts, Willie K. enrolled at Harvard but left after his first year. Beginning with a ride in a steam car in France at age 10, he was captivated by the automobile. In 1898 Willie purchased a French De Dion-Bouton tricycle, and later other vehicles that he used to speed along to his parents Long Island estate, Idle Hour.
In 1904 Willie K. set a new land speed record at Ormond Beach near Daytona, and later that year he organized the Vanderbilt Cup, the first important American trophy race. The Vanderbilt Cup was America's answer to the Gordon-Bennett Cup races held in Europe, and showcased the competition between the U.S. and European manufacturers. However, European car makers dominated the road race until 1908, when American George Robertson finally took home the honors for the U.S.
Because of crowd control problems and the 1906 death of a spectator, in 1907 Willie K. established a firm that built the Long Island Motor Parkway. His 48-mile toll road not only was used in future competitions, but led to the economic development of Long Island.
Later involved in long-distance sea and air voyages, exploration, and a very messy divorce, the Vanderbilt story involving the automobile ended tragically in 1933 when Willie K.'s son William Kissam III died in an auto accident in South Carolina while traveling back to New York from the family's Florida estate.

The finish of the Vanderbilt Cup, 1906