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Gearhead Guys You Should Know: Barney Oldfield


Gearhead Guys You Should Know: Barney Oldfield

Barney Oldfield was a race car driver. More specifically, Barney Oldfield was the first guy to gain fame and fortune for driving here in the US. With a successful bicycle racing career in full swing, he was contacted by Henry Ford to come to Michigan and drive a car.

That car turned out to be the now famous 999. In 1902 Oldfield muscled the arcane, scary, deathtrap of a car to a victory against Alexander Winton, the owner of Winton Automobiles and a seemingly unbeatable foe. Winton cars were at that time considered the highest-performing cars in the United States, if not the world. For a Ford to outrun one was sensational to a public who could mostly only afford to dream of owning a car.

The defeat of Winton, and more importantly the style that Oldfield drove with, launched him into superstardom. Guys like to argue about when drifting started. We’re saying 1902. The reason that Oldfield kicked Winton’s ass was because Winton would brake for the curves where Oldfield would keep it on the wood and slide the car around. Newspaper accounts from the day confirm it.

Oh yeah, there’s another piece of folklore from that day. Oldfield had never driven a car up until a couple hours before the race. True? Who knows but it makes for a great story.

After that race Oldfield became a household name in America. So much so, in fact, that Winton hired him to barnstorm the country with Winton cars and match race wherever he could. Barney, being the smart cat that he was, would run three heat match races. He’d win the first one by a hair, lose the second one, and then mop up on the third one. Why? That would sell tickets for the next visit. You thought that the drag racers invented match racing? Wrong.

According to some old records, Oldfield once raced at 20 different tracks in 18 weeks. Before the interstate highway system, and heck, before most of the roads were even paved.

By 1909 he was driving a Mercedes and storming around the curves at Indy, wowing the crowd with 70-mph speeds. He took the Mercedes to Ormand beach and hauled it up to 131 mph, a figure that stunned a public that thought it would be impossible to breathe driving an open car faster than 60 mph.

The AAA, which sanctioned all the official motor racing events of the day, suspended Oldfield from racing at their events for several years because they did not condone his top speed runs and match races. He carried on making huge sums of money. A Ford line worker was making $5.00 a day and was thrilled about it. Oldfield would make $4,000 a day for a match race competition. He was beyond rich.

By 1914 the AAA let him back in and Oldfield took two shots at the Indy 500. He finished 5th in 1914 driving a Stutz and became the first guy to lap Indy at over 100 mph. In 1916 he also managed at 5th place finish.

Oldfield’s most famous car was built by the legendary Harry Miller and was dubbed the Golden Submarine, seen below. It incorporated a roof to protect the driver in the event of a roll. One of Oldfield’s friends had been killed in such an accident and he wanted to improve the safety of racing cars. The body was actually wind-tunnel tested by Miller, who was and is recognized as one of the great genius designers and builders in racing history.

Oldfield defied the odds and lived to be nearly 70 years old. This was at a time when “regular” racers died on the track at a rate of one in five. Seriously.

Oldfield is a gearhead guy you should know. If it weren’t for guys like him capturing the imagination of the early motoring public with speed, sound, and fury, we’d all be driving 40hp buggies around.

Golden Submarine


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3 thoughts on “Gearhead Guys You Should Know: Barney Oldfield

  1. Jase

    Excellent Article! Just imagine if all history books were as entertaining and informative to read. I learned and enjoyed every paragraph.

  2. DanStokes

    Even up to the time I was a kid (say, mid-1950s) if a cop pulled you over for speeding he’d likely yell at the driver, “Who do you think you are, Barney Oldfield??!!” At some point this stopped when neither the driver nor the cop had any idea who Barney was.

    Dan

  3. Shawn Fox Firth

    I like the story of Oldfield and Ford meeting years later at a photo op Ford saying to Oldfield ” I guess you could say We made each other ” to which Oldfield replied ” I guess I did the better job of it ” . . .

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