Carl Fisher and the Vanderbilt Cup
William K. Vanderbilt, the son of Commodore Cornelius Vanderbilt, started the Vanderbilt Cup race to challenge American automobile manufacturers to improve their products. It was first held in October 1904 on streets and roads on Long Island, New York. The winner would receive a 30-pound silver loving cup.
After racing in the Gordon Bennett Cup in France, Carl Fisher decided to participate in the October 1905 Vanderbilt Cup race. He commissioned the Premier Company to build a racer. The race was in Nassau County on Long Island and was designed not to pass through any large villages.
Premier Motor Manufacturing Company was founded by George Weidley and Harold O. Smith in 1902 in a small room on West Georgia Street in Indianapolis. Their first vehicle featured a Weidley-designed air-cooled four-cylinder engine mounted transversely on a utility wagon frame. The firm was incorporated in 1903 with authorized capital of $50,000. Premier claimed to be the first automobile company to use an emblem, an oak leaf, as a trademark on its cars.[4] Their first touring model had three forward speeds and a reverse gear built on an 88-inch wheelbase.
It wasn’t until late September that the Premier Motor Car Company announced it was building a racing car to participate in the elimination trials for the Vanderbilt Cup race. Nicknamed the Comet, it cost $12,000. The projected speed was between 80 and 85 mph. Designed by Weidley, the racer was unique in that it had an air-cooled engine rather than water-cooled. The car had a 112-inch wheelbase. When the four-cylinder engine was tested at the factory, the “whole neighborhood and two policemen stood two blocks from the building, watching and waiting for it to blow up.” The Vanderbilt Cup race had a weight limit of 2,204 pounds. Carl Fisher would drive the car in the trials.
Participation in the Vanderbilt Cup race was not cheap. The entry fee was $2,500. Add to that the cost of transportation for the driver and mechanics, housing, tires, and other equipment.
When completed, the car weighed 2,500 pounds. In a desperate attempt to get the car down to participation weight, the company drilled 256 half-dollar-sized holes in the frame, drilled 28 ¾-inch holes in the rear axle, and removed 12 lug nuts, but it was still 150 pounds too heavy.
As Fisher watched, Victor Hemery won the race driving an 80-horsepower French Darracq. The American team consisted of two Pope automobiles driven by Bert Dingley and Herbert Lytle, a Thomas Motor Company entry driven by Joe Tracy, a Christie driven by Walter Christie, and a White Motor Company racer driven by Walter White. Tracy finished third in the race.
Despite the car being overweight for the Vanderbilt Cup, Fisher drove it on the Indiana State Fair track at 50 mph without the throttle being wide open during practice for a 100-mile event.[10] The race, initially scheduled for October 21, was postponed four times and finally occurred on November 4. Fisher and the Premier racer did not participate in the race. Instead, he drove a five-mile exhibition at an average speed of 59 mph around the one-mile dirt track.
The Premier Comet was given to Carl Fisher before the 1916 Indianapolis 500 by the Premier Motor Corporation. The car was part of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum’s collection when it was founded in 1956.