Abstract
American auto racing began as a competition between inventors and was generally criticized as a sport. The manufacturers who participated in the first races and the first promoters of these races found them of very limited utility. Critics complained that races were actually counterproductive and urged that they end. Over the next decade, however, racing would be established as one of America’s most popular sports. This study charts how that happened and how the nature of auto racings’ initial growth stamped it with a particularly class character.
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Notes
The Autocar (London), Nov. 23, 1895, pp. 44–45; The Motocycle (Chicago), Nov. 1895, pp. 17–23.
The Autocar (London), Nov. 23, 1895> pp. 44–45; The Motocycle (Chicago), Nov. 1895, pp. 17–23. Cord Scott, “The Car Race of the Century,” in The Chicago Sports Reader: 100 Years of Sports in the Windy City, Steven A. Riess and Gerald R. Gems, eds (University of Illinois Press: Urbana and Chicago, 2009), pp. 92–103.
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© 2014 Timothy Messer-Kruse
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Messer-Kruse, T. (2014). Introduction. In: Tycoons, Scorchers, and Outlaws: The Class War That Shaped American Auto Racing. Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137322517_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137322517_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Pivot, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-45841-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-32251-7
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