AUTOMOBILE 



514 



AUTOMOBILE 



SHARP CONTRASTS IN DEVELOPMENT 



The car at the left was made by Elwood Haynes in 1894 ; in the next year it won a prize for 

 excellence in design. The car at the right is a 1919 model from the factory of the same com- 

 pany. 



A modern touring car usually seats five or 

 seven passengers the driver and one other 

 person in front, three persons in the rear, and 

 two on separate seats in the tonneau. These 

 latter seats may be fixed in place, or made to 

 fold out of the way when not in use. Touring 

 cars are usually provided with collapsible cloth 

 tops and sides, which can be lowered and folded 

 at the back of the tonneau. When the top 

 and sides are permanent, are made of wood or 

 metal, and provided with glass in the doors and 

 windows, the car is known as a limousine. The 

 open touring car is the proper vehicle for use 

 in the open country, because of its lighter 

 weight, but for city use the limousine is some- 

 times more desirable, as it gives better protec- 

 tion from stormy weather. A limousine body 

 is much heavier and somewhat more costly 

 than a touring car. Another standard type is 

 the roadster, which at first was a touring car 

 built for two passengers, but by 1916 new 

 model roadsters provided seats for one or two 

 additional passengers in rather cramped quar- 

 ters. The roadster is light, powerful, speedy, 

 and particularly serviceable for the owner who 

 is also driver. There is, in addition, a variety 

 of more or less standardized models for special 

 purposes, including such familiar types as taxi- 

 cabs, motor omnibuses and sight-seeing motors. 



2. Automobiles for Racing. From the road- 

 ster has been developed a type of automobile 

 specially built for speed. A car built for racing 

 seats only two persons, the driver and his as- 

 sistant, or mechanician. The body of the car 

 is constructed to offer the least possible resist- 

 ance to air; it stands close to the ground, is 

 narrow for its length and often sharp-pointed 

 at the front, and carries nothing which will add 

 superfluous weight. Automobile race meets 

 have been a regular feature since the automo- 

 bile first came into general use. The two 



most important events in former years were 

 the annual races for the Vanderbilt Cup in 

 New York and for the Grand Prize of the 

 Automobile Clubs, the former usually at 300 

 miles and the latter at 400 miles. Later In- 

 dianapolis built what was at the time the 

 greatest speedway in the world, on which 500- 

 mile races were run regularly every year on 

 Memorial Day. Chicago followed with a sim- 

 ilar speedway in 1915, and other cities by the 

 dozen emulated these two examples, though 

 on a less pretentious scale. 



The speed record for a mile is 25.40 seconds, 

 or about 140 miles an hour. For 100 miles 

 the record is fifty-six minutes 55.71 seconds, 

 made in 1915 at New York; this speed is 

 at the rate of 105.39 miles per hour. Various 

 records both for longer and shorter distances 



THE FIRST FORD 



The 1896 model of the Ford automobile, Henry 

 Ford, the inventor, at the steering lever. 



have been made, with average speeds ranging 

 from seventy to 100 miles an hour. The 

 highest average for a distance over 100 miles 

 was also made at New York in 1915, when the 

 winner of a 350-mile race finished in three 



