RPO83

MONTREAL, Quebec, -- For more than 100 years, Ford Motor Company has been a leader in auto racing and the race car that started it all is coming to Montreal as the city gears up for the CART Molson Indy.

Making its first appearance in Canada, a replica of Henry Ford's 1901 Sweepstakes race car will be on display at the Crescent Street Ford Racing Festival, August 22-24. During the festival, the street will be closed to traffic and packed with hot cars and excitement for race fans.

When Henry Ford drove the Sweepstakes to victory against Alexander Winton on October 10, 1901, the far-reaching fame and recognition he garnered convinced investors to put money into his fledgling company, which became the Ford Motor Company.

Auto racing has come a long way since Sweepstakes ruled the track -- for example, Indy cars today can reach speeds in excess of 320 km/h, while the maximum speed for Sweepstakes is around 96 km/h.

For his victory in 1901, Henry Ford won $1,000 in prize money, and a cut glass punch bowl as a trophy. The punch bowl had been selected by Winton’s sales manager, who persuaded the race organizers to let him pick something that would look good in Winton’s home. That’s how confident they were, and how much of an underdog Ford was considered. The bowl occupied a place of honour in Henry Ford’s home until after his death in 1947. But knowledge of its history seems to have died with him, for the bowl was sold at auction in 1951 with no significance attached.

Sweepstakes, too, drifted into obscurity. Ford sold the car in 1902, got it back in the 1930s, restored it, used it for some promotions, then moved it into the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich. Sweepstakes remained there, displayed to the public on and off, until 1987, resting under the supposition that it was a replica made in the ’30s, not the original. Then it was put under wraps in a storage warehouse.

That all changed as the centennial of the 1901 race approached.

John Valentine, chief engineer at Ford Research and Vehicle Technology, thought it would be great to have even a replica of Sweepstakes running at special events during the Ford Racing 100th Anniversary celebrations. With the cooperation of Henry Ford Museum, he started the ball rolling and arranged for Glenn Miller, a development engineer at Ford Special Vehicle Engineering, to lead a project to get the car out of mothballs and, if possible, put it into running order.

When Miller and Malcolm Collum, conservator at Henry Ford Museum, removed the car’s bodywork and started looking deeper into its workings, they were soon convinced that this was, in fact, the original Sweepstakes.

“We were seeing things that just never would have been replicated in the 1930s to make a display car,” Miller said. “There were holes in the frame in various places — in the steering box area, for example — where it was obvious that parts had been attached, then moved or replaced with something else. In other words, this car had evolved, as all race cars do. Also, in the 1930s, Henry Ford never would have gone to the trouble of recreating the whole, intricate fuel “vaporizer” system. To make a car that looked right and ran, he would just have used a carburetor.”

Knowing they had the real Sweepstakes on their hands, the scope of the project changed. The task became a thorough restoration of the original car, and the building of two running replicas for displays and special events.

“My job was to see that the 1901 race car was disassembled and refurbished as carefully as possible,” said Collum, “so as to preserve the original integrity and document the process.”

“From the start, we set the ground rules,” Collum added. “We had to make sure the original car was not damaged.… We didn’t want someone taking a file to it.”

While the two exact replicas act as stand-ins for Sweepstakes at a variety of prestigious events, the restored original is on display at the Henry Ford Museum.

“Racing and this car were pivotal to Henry Ford in his early engineering successes, and his efforts to raise money for his second and third companies,” said Bob Casey, curator of transportation at Henry Ford Museum.

Attached Images

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