Stutz Bearcat

If a classic American trait is confidence, then Harry C. Stutz was as American as apple pie or baseball. A more confident car guy you are never likely to find, and, to his everlasting credit, Stutz always backed up his confidence in himself with superior quality work.

Born on a farm near Dayton, Ohio, on September 12, 1876, Stutz was only able to achieve  a grade-school education before he entered the work force, landing  a job at the Davis Sewing Machine Company and then moving on to the National Cash Register Company. Stutz wasn’t the type to sit still, despite the long hours. At night,  he took classes in mechanical engineering, and by 1897 he had designed and built his first car, a contraption nicknamed “Old Hickory” because it was built from  a discarded hardwood buggy and scrounged parts.

Stutz joins the car industry

When Stutz moved from Ohio to Indianapolis, he immediately looked for a job in the promising automobile industry and found one at the Lindsay Russell Axle Company. Soon, he transferred to the J. & G. Tire Company and then to the Schebler Carburetor Company. As his career improved, these apprenticeships gave him a thorough knowledge of automotive components that none could match.

In 1905,  Stutz got his first chance to design a production car, and he didn’t waste it. The vehicle he built, the American Underslung, was one of the most significant, if unsung, automobiles of this century’s first decade.

Not one to stick lamely with tradition, Stutz turned chassis design on its ear with his car.  Instead of having his chassis perched unsteadily on springs above the axles, Stutz hung his chassis from the axles. As Stutz himself pointed out, “Recoils [from sudden stops, for example] are upward instead of downward, because the springs operate under tension instead of compression.” Handling was helped, as well, by the vehicle’s uncommonly low center of gravity.

Car had enormous tires

The underslung principle also facilitated the use of large-diameter tires, a boon  to both tire life and handling  in an era when punctures and blow-outs were as common as Saturday night baths. The American Underslung was fitted with 40-inch wheels, a size that would have made the car impossibly top-heavy had the car used a traditional chassis.

Its transmission was almost as groundbreaking as its chassis design. Using chrome vanadium steel, Stutz conceived a 4-speed gearbox in which the shafts rotated on ball bearings. Another benefit of the unusual layout was the almost horizontal driveshaft that extended from the gearbox to rear differential. According to Stutz, the typical angled driveshaft of the period cost its vehicle 5  to 15 percent of its power. In the American Underslung,  driveline losses cost it very little of its 25-horsepower.

Stutz’s creation also offered other distinct  features. It used exceptionally long leaf springs 36 inches long in the front and 47 in the rear to minimize ride choppiness that might have been the common consequence of its relatively short 102-inch wheelbase.

Stutz was so worried with proper lubrication that he designed a crankcase that carried eight quarts of oil, instead of the typical four, and he mounted an auxiliary oil tank integrally with the gas tank, poised behind the rear seat.

A turn to Marion Car Company

The American Underslung had a racy 2-seat body (with mother-in-law seat perched uncomfortably at the rear.) Covered in buffed leather, the twin bucket seats were  full of  what sales literature called “genuine curled hair.” At $1,250,  the American Underslung was a relative bargain and a qualified victory, but Stutz didn’t stick around long enough to pay much attention. With the Underslung design at his portfolio, he transferred to the Marion Motor Car Company, a stomping grounds of one Fred Duesenberg.

His work at Marion was less high-profile than his breakthrough efforts at American, and part of the reason: he was preparing to launch a car that would carry his own name. Because of this, he put in his time at Marion, but every spare minute was spent preparing for the joyous day when he would leave.

By 1910,  his back room effort had moved from the design to the prototype show. He was pleased with the results, but he knew, to be successful,  his car had to break through into the public consciousness or it would get lost amidst the dozens of makes that were already on the market. As his ticket to the big-time, Stutz opted a rather daunting challenge–an entry in the inaugural Indianapolis 500.

Indy 500 is much smaller

For sure,  the Indianapolis 500 was not then what it is today–the biggest event in motor racing. But the initial event was expected to draw a rich international field of contestants, so Stutz’s decision to field an entry was an expression of self-confidence bordering on braggadocio.

Fortunately, the racing car Stutz  enhanced  had the goods to be successful. It was powered by a 390 cubic inch in-line  4-cylinder engine, which seems monstrous by today’s standards but was, in fact, modest in size compared to much of the competition. The cylinders were cast in pairs, and they were covered by a T-head design with intake valves on one side of the cylinders and exhaust valves on the other. Stutz specified dual ignition to protect  against misfires, and he had galleries drilled into the hefty crankshaft to carry oil to the bearings. This was a car that was prepared to race for 500 miles.

With Gil Anderson at the wheel, on May 30, 1911,  that is just what it did.  But no, it didn’t win the race. Ray Harroun took home the victory in a Marmon, and Anderson’s Stutz  ended eleventh. But for a multitude of tire-related pit stops, however, the car would have ended much higher on the list. As it was, the eleventh place finish was deemed outstanding, especially since almost half of the 40-car field dropped out before the nearly seven-hour race was over.

Introduction of the new car

With Indianapolis conquered, at least after a fashion, Stutz put into play the next chapter of his plan. He announced that the Indianapolis-based Ideal Car Company would soon introduce a passenger car edition of his successful racer in three body styles: four-passenger, five-passenger touring car and roadster.  Of course, the roadster would soon evolve into the Bearcat, and, alluding to the Indianapolis 500, Stutz referred to it in his advertising as “The Car that Made Good in a Day.”

With a wheelbase of 120 inches, the two bucket seats perched between the front and rear axles almost seemed sad. Certainly,  there wasn’t much bodywork to keep them company, just  jaunty fenders and a minimal hood. The wheels carried tires that were 4  inches wide and were 34 inches in diameter.

In ordinary trim, the mammoth, slow-revving four cylinder churned out 50 horsepower, and that power was transferred through a horizontal driveshaft to a rear gearbox cum differential, what we call today a transaxle. This arrangement  helped weight distribution and helped make the roadster and subsequent Bearcat the best-handling sports cars of its generation. (As an example of that superior handling, in the1912 Bakersfield Road Race battled over a grueling 212-mile course, Jack Bayse’s Stutz winning margin was one hour and twenty minutes over the second-place car.)

Dawn of the Bearcat

By 1914, after a stirring list of racing successes, Stutz added the Bearcat model to its line. It was essentially the previous roadster with a higher rear axle ratio to deliver a higher maximum speed. Another modification was the option of a six-cylinder engine, using the same T-head technology. It delivered about 80 horsepower, and both four- and six-cylinder engines made use of aluminum pistons, quite a novelty in their day.

Stutz tweaked the chassis for power delivery and better handling . The rear of the frame was 2 – 1/2  inches higher than the forward portion, assuring Stutz’s “straight line driveshaft.” The frame also had a 6-inch taper up front to enhance the turning radius.

To establish the worthiness of the Bearcat, a race was staged between the car and an airplane at a Fresno, California race track, and the following year Erwin G. “Cannonball” Baker  established  the coast-to-coast record of eleven days, seven hours and fifteen minutes in a Stutz Bearcat.

When the inimitable Harry C. Stutz sold out his shares in the Stutz Motor Car Company in 1919, the car he had  built had become synonymous with American performance. As Reggie Jackson once said, “It’s not boasting if you can do it,” and Harry C. Stutz and his fabled car did it indeed.

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