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In 1924,
when Gar Wood and his mechanic, Orlin Johnson, arrived at the starting
line for the Fisher-Allison Trophy Race on the Niagara River at Buffalo,
they were dressed in evening wear—white ties, tail coats, the works.
According to Anthony Mollica, author of Gar Wood Boats: Classics of a
Golden Era, Wood even wore an opera hat fitted with a chinstrap. They
won all three heats and were awarded the trophy looking dapper, if somewhat
disheveled.
Wood’s
motivation for this particular publicity stunt was manifold and in all
likelihood can be traced back two years, to when the committee overseeing
the American Power Boat Association’s (APBA) Gold Cup Races instituted
sweeping changes in the rules governing the competition. Prior to 1922
Wood—teamed up with Christopher Columbus Smith, the eventual founder
of Chris-Craft—had won five straight Gold Cups under rules that
left the design of the boats and the engines that powered them virtually
unregulated. Wood’s deep pockets were matched by his unparalleled
fervor for extreme performance, and every year following his first Gold
Cup victory in 1917, he relentlessly upped the ante with bigger engines
and brawnier boats. By 1921, with entries falling off because of the great
cost of facing Wood and with the Eastern boat-racing establishment supremely
resentful of upstart Midwesterners dominating the sport, something had
to be done.
So the
legend goes, with much truth in it. But there was a parallel rationale
on the part of the APBA organizers, and it’s clear in the rules
themselves: All boats competing in 1922 would have to have a minimum of
25 feet of waterline length, and only displacement or semidisplacement
hulls were allowed. Engines could not exceed 625 cubic inches in displacement,
had to have wet exhaust, and had to be enclosed under hatches. Finally,
every boat in competition was required to have seating capacity for four
people. In short, the APBA throttled down competition to a level that
produced boats that nonracers could cope with. They had, in fact, deliberately
legislated the development of stylish speedboats—“gentleman’s
runabouts” that, as Wood playfully demonstrated, could be piloted
in a tux.
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Gar Wood, Part 2 > Page 1, 2,
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