Climbing aboard Craig Ekberg’s 1915 Stutz Bearcat reminds me of driving a tractor as a kid, because you have to climb up onto it, rather than down into it. The big cat’s bucket seat is much more comfortable than a tractor’s but not much bigger, and you are out in the open air, with no doors or windshield. You must enter the car from the left side because the steering is on the right, and the handbrake and gearshift block entrance from that side.
The enormous walnut steering wheel is up in your face at eye level, forcing you to look around either side of it to see where you are going, and I am over six feet tall. You’ve seen the old photos of the race drivers with their heads tilted to one side while driving? That was because they couldn’t look through the wheel with its large brass spark lever and throttle-quadrant in the way.
I depress the floor-mounted starter, and after a few turns, the old lion roars to life with a startling ground-shaking rumble. Its huge, four-cylinder, T-head engine displacing 389-cubic-inches and sounds as menacing as any big predator. To drive the car around the neighborhood, I push the cutout lever closed, diverting the exhaust through the muffler and tailpipe. Today we would call it a cutout, but in the car’s era it functioned as a cut-in because it existed only to run the exhaust through a muffler while in town or passing horses. Otherwise, the engine’s exhaust was designed to go straight out.
The Bearcat is a big, smelly, brawler and you know it. The brass gearshift lever looks like it would be right at home on a San Francisco cable car. The emergency brake lever beside it also looks as if it could stop a locomotive. The polished walnut dash is way down below your line of vision, but includes a speedometer, clock, amp and oil pressure gauges, all of which look like they were hand crafted by a fine watchmaker.
The pedals are conventional, except that the throttle is in the middle between and below the clutch and brake pedals. The brake and clutch pedals are higher and overlap the throttle pedal slightly so as to keep your foot from flopping around on rough roads.
I put the car into first gear and ease out the leather-faced, cone clutch. It is an all or nothing affair that allows for very little finessing. And, unless Neatsfoot oil is rubbed into the clutch’s lining now and then, you wind up with what they used to call a “suicide clutch”. The old Bearcat takes off like a modern car due to its immense, low-end torque, but runs out of revs pretty quickly by modern standards. Shifting requires matching the rpms and double-clutching, because synchromesh didn’t come along until 1929.
Steering is lighter than you would expect from a car of this size and vintage, and to an extent it is self-centering, though not completely. You still have to center it up after a turn, but when rolling along you can guide the car with one finger! Brakes are the mechanical, internal expanding types on the back axle only, but if you need more stopping power than the foot pedal provides, you can also pull back on the handbrake lever to actuate two more rear-wheel brakes with separate drums and linings. Admittedly, however, the Bearcat wasn’t made for stopping.
Instead, it was built for speed. A Stutz qualified at 95 mph, in 1915 at Indy, and that was insanely fast for a car of this vintage. Even the street version would do 85 mph, if you had the grit to try it. We never got over 60 in Ekberg’s example, but even at that speed you feel like you’ve hitched a ride with Sebastian Vettel in a Formula One car. A good bump at speed would throw you out of the thing easily, and its underslung suspension, which provides for superior cornering, is fairly stiff.
No seat belts, helmets or roll bars were provided, and if you lost control, the typical strategy of the day was to throw yourself out of the thing in order to keep it from rolling over on you and crushing you. Fire was also a possibility in a crash because the car carried plenty of fuel, and the tank was not protected or self-sealing.
The Stutz has a large turning radius, and braking takes planning, but it is absolutely thrilling to drive, and handles a lot better than other cars made in 1915. The ride is a bit harsh by today’s standards, but remember, the machine was designed to negotiate washboard dirt roads and stay together without drama. That’s why the headlights are as sturdily mounted as the searchlights on the Titanic, and everything is big and heavy-duty. However, despite all that, the car is pretty lightweight for its day.
That’s because it consists of nothing but the basics. The big engine is in a tin dog house up front, followed by a minimal dash with a few instruments on it; and in the driver’s area there are a couple of little, low, bun-hugging tuffits for seats, followed by a big round gas tank. Headlights and fenders were fitted to models intended for the street, but the racecars went without.
The engine in the 1915 Bearcat is a 389-cubic-inch, four-cylinder with the cylinder barrels cast in pairs. It is also a T-head, side-valve setup, which means it has a cross-flow head (Inlet on one side, exhaust on the other) with huge combustion chambers; but with the cams and lifters located down in the block. There are two spark plugs per cylinder to ensure a complete burn across the big 4-3/8-inch pistons. And, with its 6-inch stroke, it makes immense torque. That big engine, combined with a bare bones chassis, made for a very effective racer.
Stutz’s slogan beginning in 1911, after they raced in the first Indianapolis 500, was: “The car that made good in a day.” The Stutz entry was designed by Harry Stutz, but built by Ideal Motors, and was really the prototype of the Bearcat. It was put together in the astoundingly short period of five months; and without any preliminary testing it still came in 11th. Now you may say “So what, that’s out of the money” but you have to take into account that back then Indy was an endurance race, and many entries didn’t finish at all.
Those were different times, and the Indy 500 was an entirely different race. The pits were just that; open pits over which the drivers drove their cars so mechanics could work on them. There was also a ride-along mechanic whose job—other than repairing the car out on the 2.5-mile track—was to act as a spotter for the driver. Also—just as today—a driver did his best to set the fastest qualifying time, yet the officials pulled numbers out of a hat to determine an entrant’s actual starting position! You may still be saying, “So what; the Stutz only came in 11th,” but consider this: The Stutz was running against much more expensive European competition equipped with much larger engines. It would be somewhat like entering a new Corvette ZR1 in the 2014 Indy 500 although the displacement disparity would be reversed.
The Bearcat’s designer, Harry C. Stutz, was born in 1876 and grew up on his family’s farm in Indiana working on agricultural machinery. During that period he became fascinated with internal combustion engines, and built his first car in 1897. He continued to design his own engines, and then, in 1906, he joined American Motors in Indianapolis and designed a small, but rather expensive car for them. It had a four-cylinder engine that produced a then hair raising 40 horsepower, but it was not a sales success.
Stutz left American Motors in 1907, and signed on with the Marion Motor Company as their chief engineer. Then, in 1910, he started the Stutz Auto Parts Company to manufacture a new transaxle he had designed. This was used on the 1915 Bearcat, and was a revolutionary breakthrough at the time. Shifting was sure and swift when the linkage was properly adjusted, and the design transferred more weight to the rear, which helped the car’s handling.
Stutz then decided to go racing, and the Stutz entry in the 500 was essentially the first Stutz ever built. The untried prototype was sent to the Brickyard, and that was quite a gamble. Gil Anderson, who had raced Marions for Harry Stutz in the past, took over as driver for the Indy race. Okay, so the Stutz didn’t win, but it finished well; and it did not break during the race.
Bearcats and other Stutz specials continued to win races and set records into the next decade. In 1927, a Stutz established a world record, averaging 68 mph for 24 hours. Then, in 1928, a 300 cubic-inch Stutz finished 2nd in the 24 hours of Le Mans, losing only to a Bentley. That would remain the best result at Le Mans for an American car until 1966! Later, in 1928, a Stutz Blackhawk Special using a pair of 91 cubic-inch, dual overhead cam engines, in a streamliner driven by Frank Lockhart, set another record at Daytona of 107 mph.
The Stutz Motor Company of Indianapolis grew out of the parts business and Ideal Motors, and made plenty of money even during World War I, and the Bearcat was produced and raced successfully—albeit in continuously updated form—until 1925. But Harry Stutz was forced out of his company by stockholders in 1919.
And then in 1922, Charles Schwab was given control of the company. The company eventually floundered, and in turn he passed the baton to Frederick Moscovics, in 1925. Moskovics intended to revitalize the company by producing high-end, high-performance luxury sedans, but that approach was soon made irrelevant by the Great Depression.
In later years, Stutz also made a name for itself by emphasizing safety. The company was the first to have safety glass, though it was the kind that had wire embedded in it to keep the glass from shattering, instead of the laminated glass that came later. The company also pioneered hydraulic brakes, but they used water for their operating fluid rather than the mineral-based liquids used in later cars.
The company’s Blackhawk, and custom-built 156 horsepower, DV32 8-cylinder models were handsome, fast, and well appointed, and had a lower center of gravity than other cars of the time. They also featured a transmission called a Noback that prevented rolling backward on a hill.
The DV32 engine was a dual overhead cam, 32-valve, straight-eight designed by Fred Duesenberg. Coachbuilders such as Weymann and stylists such as Gordon Buehrig designed and built elegant custom bodies for the company’s cars, but near the end, in 1935, Stutz was competing in a rapidly shrinking niche after the stock market crash of October 1929.
When hard times hit, the custom, hand-built carriage trade dried up within a few years for primarily two reasons. Number one was because so many people who had been well off before, were made paupers by the market crash and bank failures. Secondly, well-to-do people did not want to be seen in flashy expensive sporty cars when 25 percent of the population was unemployed, destitute and angry. Of course, movie stars liked the notoriety of the great classics, but there weren’t enough of them to keep the luxury makes going.
The few manufacturers of high-end, handbuilt classics such as Cadillac and Lincoln that had backing from conglomerates, like General Motors and Ford, soldiered on through the ’30s, but companies that catered exclusively to the carriage trade died out, with the exception of Packard, which survived by building mass-produced junior models along with their handbuilt senior offerings.
Roaring along at speed, out in the wind in a Bearcat is more like riding a motorcycle than driving in a modern car—even an open one. And driving a Bearcat through hills takes concentration and participation. You are constantly shifting, steering, braking and accelerating, all of which takes real physical effort. The throws on the transmission shifter are big, and the handbrake is a ratchet affair. Double-clutching is an art, and so is shifting. When braking, you only get back what you put into it, and you need the foot brake, as well as the emergency brake, for panic stops.
Altogether it is one of the most exciting drives I have ever done. I have driven much faster more modern cars, but the sensation of speed is more subtle with them. You know you are going fast in a Stutz. And you know your life is in your own hands and no one else’s.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end. We swing into the parking area where Ekberg keeps his cars and roll to a stop. I shut off the engine, slip over and step out and down. I feel like I have been on an amusement park thrill ride and had a physical workout at the same time. I can’t imagine what 500 miles at top speed in such a machine would take in terms of endurance, but there is a part of me that would like to try, even at my age. The Stutz made good in a day, and so did I, because I loved every minute of our little spin in a Bearcat.
SPECIFICATIONS
1915-1922 STUTZ BEARCAT
Engine: T-head I-4, 389 cid (4-3/8 × 6-in. bore × stroke), 16 valves, 80 bhp
Transmission: 3-speed transaxle; leather-faced cone clutch
Suspension: front and rear: Rigid axles, semi-elliptic leaf springs
Brakes: Internal expanding on rear wheels
Wheelbase: 120 inches
Top speed: 85 mph (street machine)
Production: About 1,000 from 1915-1922
