A few other organizations will be mentioned in passing. There are so many of these organizations that have existed over the years, that even if I had a clue - and I don't in some cases - about them, there simply isn't enough space to do them justice.

The Automobile Club of America

In 1899, the Automobile Club of America (ACA) was created. It was based in New York and the product of the Eastern elite, the new leisure class, the nouveau riche that was the result of the new wealth being produced in America. Someone has said that it was originally more of a motorized Jockey Club than anything else. In some ways this is not far from the mark, since many members were either educated in Europe or spent much of their time there - and usually both.

The ties of the ACA to Europe, therefore, were strong from its very beginning. Among its earliest self-appointed tasks was to serve as the American entrant for the American automobiles of Alexander Winston which appeared for the I Coupe Internationale, the James Gordon Bennett Cup, held in 1900.

The intent of the club, however, was not focused solely on competition or sporting uses of the new machines. It was soon to take up the mission to assist the new motorists in every sense of the word. Motoring was an adventure in the days which straddled the turn of the 20th Century. This was true even in the environs of New York and its surrounding boroughs and the wilds of Long Island.

The ACA was to become a motor club which catered to primarily an upscale clientele. The ACA provided a means to lobby the city and State governments for a variety of issues, including better roads and changes to the legal system to accommodate the new vehicles. It also had the funding and clout to get its way more often than not. The ACA was by no means unique in this mission, just better funded.

When the Association Internationale des Automobile Clubs Reconnu - or AIACR - was established after the running of the 1904 Coupe Internationale, or Gordon Bennett Cup, the Automobile Club Nationale, or ACN, of the United States was the ACA. This meant that it was the American international representative on all matters automotive. As such, it played an important role with the increasing importance and size of the American automotive industry in the first decades of the new century.

The ACA built its own building in 1907 at 253 West Fifty-fourth Street in New York. The exterior was "buff brick and subtly polychromed terra cotta without disguising the presence of the reinforced concrete structure." On the ground floor were areas for washing the cars of the members and the elevators for lifting them to the garages for them on the upper floors.

The upper floors were highlighted "with a repetitive pattern of metal-framed infill windows." Also, the "piano nobile, sandwiched between the garage facilities, contained a large assembly room and grill room for members' use."

The ACA Building was designed by Ernest Flagg, who also designed the first house in New York to feature a garage. It was his own house at 109 West Fortieth Street, which he designed in 1905 and built in 1907 at the same time as the ACA Building. The garage was actually in the basement and reached by driving through an arched entry, with "elaborate iron gates," which led to an elevator that lowered the automobile to the basement.

At home, the ACA was not wielding much clout. It had run up against the American Automobile Association and the "Three-A" was a formidable foe in more ways than one. As the discontent in Europe with the Coupe Internationale regulations increased and the Automobile Club de France (ACF) began plotting to establish its own international racing event, the ACA was thinking along the same lines.

Although the ACF pushed back the date for its race - the Grand Prix de l'Automobile Club de France - from 1905 to 1906, already the ACA was pondering its own "Grand Prize" event. There was a fly in the ointment, however, in the form of a certain William Kissam - "Willie K" - Vanderbilt, Junior.

Vanderbilt was fascinated by speed of just about any kind, donating trophies for horse racing, yachting, and polo - much like others of the day. He was also from the same element of society which brought forth the ACA. Unlike many of his ilk, "Willie K" was not fazed by the automobile as a sporting vehicle, as in competition vehicle. He was both rich and young, not always a good combination.

When the ACA proved slow to enter the racing world on the western shores of the Atlantic, "Willie K" and a few of his fellow young men of money and leisure created their own organization in 1900 to sanction their racing - the National Automobile Racing Association.

While scarcely like the racing that would later follow, there was one event held by the association that year, a hill-climb in the Newport, Rhode Island locale. The winner of the five-mile race was "Willie K" and this allowed him to wear the crown as what the association grandiloquently entitled the "Champion of America."

"Willie K" spent several seasons in Europe competing in various events, including the ill-fated 1903 Paris-Madrid race. With this European experience under his belt, young Vanderbilt returned to America and announced his intention to sponsor a race series in the best European tradition (such as it was at the time, of course).

What sent the ACA into spasms of disbelief, rending of garments, and gnashing of teeth, was young Vanderbilt's intention to have the new event sanctioned by the "Three-A" and not the ACA. Branded as a traitor to his class and the source of much ill will between the AAA and the ACA for a number of years, both "Willie K" and his race are to surface later in this account.

Thus deprived of an opportunity for holding its own international event since the dynamic "Willie K" shifted all the attention to his race, modestly called the "William K. Vanderbilt, Jr. Cup", its first running was in October 1904. The ACA did assist the AAA with the race, since it was literally in its backyard, Long Island.

The Vanderbilt Cup Commission was composed of members from both the ACA and the AAA, but the race itself was run under the sanction of the AAA. Uneasy relationship on the Vanderbilt Cup Commission was better than not having any relationship so both parties made the best of the hand they were dealt.

Yet, the ACA never abandoned its hope for its own international event. The Vanderbilt Cup ran into some problems which led to the event not being held in 1907. The ever difficult problem of crowd control and the deficit nature of the finances if conducting the event coincided to force the Vanderbilt Cup Commission to postpone and then cancel the 1907 Cup race. This allowed certain members of the ACA to begin thinking that just perhaps they could finally seriously consider their own race equivalent to the even-then significant Grand Prix de l'ACF.

The Savannah Automobile Club was established in 1904 as the provenance of the gentlemen that were touting themselves as the leaders of the New South. These were also men of a sporting bent and when the Vanderbilt Cup was not run in 1907 due to the problems on Long Island, the club decided to bid for the 1908 running of the Cup race.

Although the AAA Racing Board visited Savannah and came away with a most favorable impression of both the city and the club - not to mention the offer by the Governor of Georgia to the club for the use of National Guard troops to ensure that the crowds were kept under proper control as well as the use of convict labor to prepare the course, it was decided to continue to run the Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island for at least three more years.

The ACA soon received word from the President of Savannah Automobile Club, Frank C. Battey, suggesting that perhaps the organization might wish to run a race there. The ACA Contest Board Chairman, Robert Lee Morrell, followed in the footsteps of his opposite number at the AAA, racing Board Chairman Jefferson LaMont Thompson, and paid a visit to Savannah to inspect the proposed course and listen to the proposal being tendered by Battey and Savannah Mayor George Tiedeman. When it was said and done, Savannah was to run the first "International Road Race for the Grand Prize of the Automobile Club of America" in November 1908, with a magnificent Gold Cup as the prize.

An advantage that the ACA was to enjoy in the running of its American Grand Prize race was that the AAA decided to not use the "Ostend Formula" to which the ACF ran its Grand Prix, and instead imposed a maximum weight of 1,200 kilograms on the cars. The "Ostend Formula" placed a maximum bore dimension on the engines - 155mm for four-cylinder engines and 127mm for six-cylinder engines - and a minimum weight of 1,100 kilograms. While the Vanderbilt Cup celebrated the first victory by an American driver and car - George Robertson in a Locomobile to gain fame as "Ol' Number 16" - Savannah harbor saw the European elite unload their latest and greatest for the race.

The 1908 Grand Prize was won by Louis Wagner in a FIAT from Victor Hemery in a Benz. The best American showing was Louis Strang at the wheel of a Renault and there were no American cars around at the finish. Officially that is, Joe Seymour in a Simplex being flagged as he finished his 15th of the 16 laps scheduled for the race. America now had two events of international stature in the racing world.

The advent of this new event was to have an outcome which few would have suspected just a few years prior to 1908: a thaw in the distant relationship between the ACA and the AAA. Although thrust together on the Vanderbilt Cup Commission, the relationship was cordial and polite and little more than that. However, the two soon joined together to create the Motor Cups Holding Company, the organization which would serve to promote the two events each year - the Vanderbilt Cup and the American Grand Prize.

In 1911, the two events were held in tandem for the first time and from then on paired together at the venue selected for the events. Except for 1913, the races were usually run several days until 1916, after which both passed into history. In 1913, neither race was held.

After the final running of the American Grand Prize at Santa Monica, California, in November 1916, the ACA faded from the scene in American racing. Until this point it had served as the American ACN, a role it would relinquish to the AAA after the Great War.

Later on in this series, we will take a closer look at the ACA Grand Prize races and the men and machines that contested these events, from Savannah to Milwaukee to Santa Monica and San Francisco and finally back to Santa Monica.

References

• Tim Considine, American Grand Prix Racing - A Century of Drivers & Cars, Osceola, Wisconsin: Motorbooks International Publishers, 1997.
• G. N. Georgano, Editor, The Encyclopedia of Motor Sport, New York: Viking Press, 1971.
• David Hodges, The French Grand Prix 1906 - 1966, London: Temple Press Books, 1967.
• Doug Nye, The United States Grand Prix and Grand Prize Races 1908 - 1977, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1978.
• Julian K. Quattlebaum, The Great Savannah Races, Athens, Georgia: Brown Thrasher Books - University of Georgia Press, 1983.
• Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin and John Montague Massengale, New York 1900: Metropolitan Architecture and Urbanism 1890 - 1915, New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1983 and republished 1992.