NEWS: CAR COLLECTORS INDULGE

CENTENNIAL OF THE 1909 OCEAN TO OCEAN ENDURANCE CONTEST UNDERWAY FROM NEW YORK TO SEATTLE
55 Model –Ts Ambling Their Way from White Plains to Seattle

As this moment, a group of car enthusiasts are making their way --at the wheel of one of their beloved antique vehicles--from Olathe, Kansas to Abilene in what is the 10th leg of a month-long cross-country car race. The racers, mostly well-heeled middle agers who care about things historic, geographic, natural, and on four wheels, are traveling from White Plains, NY to Seattle, Wash., in celebration of the Centennial of Robert Guggenheim's original 1909 race that helped promote the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific (AYP) Exposition in Seattle that year.
The original race started in New York City on June 1, 1909, when President William Taft pressed a golden telegraph key from Washington, D.C., setting off two events at once: the opening of the AYP Exposition in Seattle, and giving the signal to New York city Mayor George Brinton McClellan, jr. to fire a golden revolver, thus, launching one of history’s greatest, if not most colorful, cross-country car races.
Today, hearing the story warms your heart: what with all that American ingenuity and energy and innovation at the dawn of the invention of the automobile. It conjures an appealing and inspiring image of men in their peculiar machines enduring a 22-day trip and overcoming miserable driving conditions. The summer rains were relentless, and the mud, quicksand, desert and badlands consumed the drivers and their cars in one way or another throughout the formidable journey.
Henry Ford entered two automobiles, convinced correctly so that a “cheap, tough, lightweight, flexible car” was what was needed for the impassable roads along the 4,106 mile trek. And it was Ford, consummate industry force that he was, who in fact claimed first place at the finish line of the race, though, in truth, the victory did not belong to his 1909 Model-T, in spite of the vehicles’ heroics: one for catching fire and the other for sinking four feet in the snow. It was the Shawmut, in fact, that was the victor, though it arrived 17 hours after the Ford.
Indeed, the Ford 1909 Model T was declared winner at the finish line, on the spot today where the Drumheller Fountain sits in the center of the University of Washington campus. Henry ford was on hand—his photo captured that day—and thrilled to no end. He would go on to leverage the victory so effectively in the ensuing six months that the world became convinced through his brilliant media blitz that the Ford Model T was the car to buy, and for the next eight years, more than 15 million Model Ts were manufactured.
Quietly, in November 1909, the Shawmut, a heavier car as compared to the Model-T, more akin to its fellow entrants the Stearns, Acme and Itala, was acknowledged winner of the race by the Automobile Club of America. Of course, the victory was too little too late. That the Ford team had broken one of the race rules by illegally substituting the engine for part of the distance bore no repercussions—and today, the 2009 centennial race has in its line up more than 55 Model-Ts that are following the original route, stopping in towns in which racers stopped a century ago.
How quintessentially American is that? We forgive, we forget and we move on, unwavering in our love affair with cars.
Forthcoming post: The 2009 Centennial Race Participants' Profiles and Reporting.