The Wayback Machine
I wasn’t born on wheels, but as soon as I could walk, I had some. So, it was only a matter of time before I would get interested in cars.
That’s me driving my first set o’ wheels, 1949!
My first exposure to speedsters was when I was ten years old. I remember accompanying my father, who was a commercial photographer, on a "shoot" one Saturday.
That’s my father in the 1940s, beginning his career in photography. Not sure if this was taken before or after his USN submarine service in WWII.
I was his camera boy and I carried his bag full of 4x5 film packs and Sylvania blue flash bulbs. My dad shot with a Folmer-designed Graflex Speed Graphic, a great news camera! It consisted of a versatile box with an expanding bellows, and onto this one would mount lenses in the front and film packs in the back, then clip on a shutter trigger and a flash. It had a focal plane shutter that could shoot 1/1000 of a second and the lenses produced great images.
1940s-era Graflex Speed Graphic. Invented in 1899, this camera featured a focal plan shutter and was a news person’s everyday tool. image courtesy Wikipedia.
The year was 1957, and we went to photograph a 1905 Stanley Model G Speedster that belonged to a friend of his. I distinctly remember the firing of the boiler and fine-tuning the flame to build pressure in that old steam car. The driver mounted the speedster and sat behind the dash controls, grabbed and released a couple of levers, and off he went in a silent =whoosh!=, punctuated by a hissing chu-chug-chug that accelerated in frequency as the car hurtled down the road. I was both transfixed and smitten. I had to have one.
1905 Stanley Model G Speedster. image courtesy Kit Foster’s book on Stanley Steamers.
Things That Happen, Things That Don’t
Truth be told, I never did get that Stanley Gentleman’s Speedster. Nor the various Ford Model T cutdowns that rambled through my life. Or that Auburn 8-851 Supercharged Speedster that passed to someone else with the cash in hand.
So instead, I read about speedsters. And I went to concours, where I met owners of speedsters who told me their stories and how they got their car.
I kept looking for that one project that would fit my need and my budget, but I didn’t get that elusive old-time speedster that I was yearning for. At least, not yet….
Plan B
It seemed that every time I participated in an open-air or online discussion with a bunch of speedster enthusiasts, they would talk about their group’s particular speedster as if it was the only one ever produced. Fordists would only talk about Fords. Auburn lovers would only consider Auburns, and Mercer fans? Well, Mercer was about the only real speedster ever made.
Because I was a lover of books, and always consulted them whenever I had a question to settle, I decided to look for a book on speedsters, a text that would clearly define what they were, aggregate different companies and models together, tease out commonalities and themes. Tie it all together.
There were books on all types of automotive models. Sedans. Coupes. Cabriolets. Berlinettas. But no book on speedsters.
It was then that I decided to write that book. One was needed to add this model to the body of knowledge about classic cars; after all, speedsters were the root of the American sports car. And if I couldn’t find an old-time speedster that I could afford to buy, at least I could write about them.
Implementing the Dream
After six or seven years of visiting libraries and private collections all over the United States, reading old journals and books, I had amassed enough information that I could start writing about the topic. I created my blog on classic speedsters in 2018 while drafting chapters of a book on the subject.
The blog is broader in scope, but not everyone reads a blog; I had to reach a wider audience, and a book can do that.
And so I pressed on with writing the book, having the chapters fact-checked by marque experts, gathering photos and illustrations for each chapter, writing and re-writing. I wrote a book proposal and got turned down by scores of author agents. Then I tried publishers, and got the same result. Despite this rejection, I knew that I had a good idea, and that the book was going to have some worth.
It was then that I decided to self-publish, a daunting but doable task. It seemed like it took forever before I was ready to hire book editors to help me tidy up the text. And when the time seemed right, I hired a book designer to put it all together, which he very artfully did.
Each chapter opens with an image from the chapter that sets it off. This image is of a 1921 Haynes Blue Ribbon Speedster from chapter one. What a car!
Producing Production
It seemed like it took forever, but my designer had anticipated looming supply-chain problems and thus hired a printer in Canada that he trusted and had worked with before. The book was finally printed, and it has now been delivered to me for sale and distribution. Ten long years of research and writing; not forever, but certainly long enough!
Above is an image of the dust jacket for the book. The front is of a 1913 Stutz Bearcat competition model; note the Excelsior motorcycle in the background! The back cover is a late 1920s Packard sales brochure image of the Packard Proving Grounds with a quote from Karl Ludvigsen, who wrote the Foreword to the book. Nathan Moehlmann of Goosepen Press was the book designer and did a fantastic job!
It was only natural that, after all of the struggle to get this book born, and all of the rejection from agents and publishers to whom I had pitched the book, that I should carry the ball over the goal line myself. So I did!
For now, this book is exclusively for sale on my website, https://ClassicSpeedsters.com, until further notice.
Where to Find It on the Site
The book’s sales page is a tab on the menu bar at the top of the website page; click on it to go visit and read more information about the book, and I hope that you will buy a copy. Please share this information with your friends and those you know who would be interested in such a book. Hint: it would make a great holiday gift!
Now that the books are delivered and I have start reading other author’s work again, I’ve decided to periodically share with you other car books that I have found worth reading. Next post we will review a recently published text on automobile advertising, a book that I think many of you would be interested in purchasing when they become available again in January 2022. Lucky for me, I bought a copy the day before the first edition ran out!