Pre-war cars normally aren’t in my wheelhouse of interest. I appreciate the history, I appreciate seeing how technology advanced from the first horseless carraiges to what we have today, but once you brush that aside, for the most part…it just doesn’t do it for me except for certain, special cases. The “Beast of Turin” Fiat featured elsewhere today is one of those cars, because that’s so radically overkill, even by today’s standards, that you can’t help but appreciate it. The Stutz Bearcat is another. I might have to have a Bearcat pointed out to me to realize what kind of car it is, but I know why it’s important: In the early league of cars, this thing would be right about where a Corvette or Mustang would be, a hot performer that had looks, playfulness, and noise. The noise part comes from a 360ci double-cam, 16-valve four-cylinder that made double digit horsepower and, compared to today’s currency, would be right about on par with a V8 Camaro or low-end Corvette price-wise. And in keeping with that modern company, the Bearcat actually has a kind of cutout feature for the exhaust. Sorry, kids, but your great-great-granddad could make the car louder while sitting at the wheel, too…and he did it with better style than you.
The car is impressive, but it’s the car’s history that will sit with you. This particular Bearcat used to belong to Alexander Kennedy Miller, the legendary eccentric from Vermont who collected many things on his property, from Volkswagens and autogyros, to gold and silver bullion, and so on and so forth. Living with his wife on a farm that many viewed as dilapidated and sketchy, nobody could have foreseen his collection when it was finally auctioned off in 1996 after his wife passed (Miller himself died in 1993 after falling off of a roof at the age of 87). Among the cars already mentioned was a 1926 Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost and over thirty Stutz cars, a brand he loved dearly.
Two points if you can figure out what kind of pre-war car co-stars in the background of the Trump/Billy Bush video that we’ve had to hear about dozens of times a day for weeks…that was one of Leno’s too, parked outside the Tonight Show studio in the “midway” of the old NBC/Burbank lot. He used to drive cars such as the above from his collection to work each day.
Is that the same A.K. Miller of Bonneville and La Carrera Panamerica racing fame?
if this is the car he bought at auburn meet,i was looking at this car to buy it
had gone to miller’s home to try. i got into a conversation with jay as we were looking at the car that man is a pure gentleman i stopped biding at 42,000.00
i believed he paid over 100,00.00