Two different animals – the (Stutz) Bearcat and the Lynx

The Stutz Racers. Stutz steadily developed the racer model and entered three at Indianapolis in 1915 which was their last effort with factory entered cars. – The Stonnell’s cars was #5 in 1915.

The Stonnell family farmed in Lepperton, Taranaki, and during World War II an historic car with a very impressive racing history was pressed into service as a farm vehicle. When Lou Stonnell took over the farm later he harboured an interest in motor racing and it was from this interest another racing car was born.

The American auto maker Stutz company slogan of 1911 “The car that made good in a day” was well justified. The first Stutz car, a prototype of a passenger car to be called the Bearcat, ran in the first 500 mile race at Indianapolis in 1911 and finished in 11th place. Perhaps not remarkable from a strictly racing viewpoint, but an outstanding achievement for a prototype passenger car which only weeks earlier had consisted of a set of drawings. This initial success encouraged the Stutz Motor Company to continue along the race road to fame until they had eclipsed all other manufacturers and became champions of the United States.

From 1911 to 1914 Stutz chalked up an impressive list of victories on both road circuit and track and using the same Wisconsin engine as fitted in their normal production passenger car, only slightly modified for racing. It was a T head engine with a 4½" bore and 5½" stroke. Neither the revolutions or the output were anything terrific, the successful performance being due to light weight, excellent preparation ensuring reliability, and good drivers. The car had the reputation of handling well, contrary to what was expected at the time of a chassis having a rear axle mounted gearbox. Barney Oldfield drove a Stutz into 5th place in the 1914 Indianapolis 500 being the first American car to finish.

For the 1915 season Wisconsin produced an entirely new special racing engine bearing no resemblance to their production engines. The crankshaft was divided in the centre, and was carried on three large diameter ball bearings. It had a single overhead camshaft and 16 overhead valves inclined in the non-detachable head. This was the way the European racing engines had been heading, as were the famous American Duesenberg racing engines. The trend had actually been started by Peugeot and had been further developed by American companies.

This Wisconsin engine became the most successful racing engine made in America at that time and gave Stutz both the road and the track championships for 1915. A cone clutch connected the engine via a drive shaft to the gearbox which was still mounted on the rear axle. The gearbox, along with the front and rear axles were standard passenger car units. Three cars were built and raced, and a strange series of coincidences has made it possible to trace the history of one of them, number 5, to New Zealand.

Stutz entered three cars for the 1915 Indianapolis 500 and they finished third (driven by Gil Anderson in number 5) fourth and seventh. Gil Anderson was only nine minutes behind the winning Mercedes of Ralph de Palma after 500 miles averaging 87.6 mph.

Stutz withdrew from factory sponsored racing on the crest of the wave at the end of the 1915 season, and the cars were sold to private owners. The number 5 car Gil Anderson drove was sold to Cliff Durant, manager of the Chevrolet assembly plant in Oakland California. Durant entered the car in the 1919 Indianapolis 500 as a Durant Special and it was driven into 2nd place by Eddie Hearne.

This was the last appearance of these cars in big time racing as a change of formula ruled them out. What happened to the other two ex-factory cars is unclear but we can follow the life of number five. From 1919 to 1923 the Durant owned car successfully competed in dirt track events around the California area. In 1920 Cliff Durant sold the car and, after at least one other change of ownership, in 1923 Stutz number 5 was sold by a Mr Roberts of San Francisco, through his brother in Auckland, to Selwyn Craig in Auckland. Craig started it in the 1924 race for the New Zealand Motor Cup on the Muriwai Beach but he burnt out the clutch on the start line, then allowed the engine to over-rev and threw a rod out the side, all before he had covered a hundred yards. This was the first misfortune of a glorious career for the car in New Zealand.

Selwyn Craig unfortunately died before the next Motor Cup and the car, with a patch on the sump, was sold to Tim Bell who did not do too well with it. Number 5 was then sold to Bob Wilson who passed it over to Mason and Porter Ltd, engineers of Auckland, for rebuilding, and it was restored to good condition. During that rebuilding they cast a new crankcase in bronze to replace the damaged alloy unit and the bronze casing remains to this day.

Bob drove it in the New Zealand Motor Cup, which he won three times in a row, 1926, ’27 and ‘28. These three straight wins meant that Bob Wilson had won the New Zealand Motor Cup outright. Later, when the New Zealand Grand Prix was formalised, Bob put the cup up as this country’s premier motoring prize.

In 1929 Bob Wilson again won at Muriwai Beach in the Stutz, the event renamed as the Australasian Beach Championships, and in the process he set a new five mile beach record of 177.4 kph the same day.

When George Smith set a lap record at the new Hennings speedway near Mangere, Bob Wilson went out in the Stutz a month later and bettered it. By March of the following year Reg Grierson (Wilson’s long time mechanic) had lowered the lap record by 17 seconds and was also attributed with a top speed of 190 kph at Muriwai. In 1930 the Stutz again won the Australasian Beach Championships with Grierson at the wheel.

The Stutz was then taken over by Ces Sutherland who dominated the 1931 and 1932 New Zealand beach races at Muriwai before it passed to the next owner Tommy Cooper, then P T Therkleson of Hastings who replaced the Wisconsin motor with a straight-eight Roosevelt unit. After that the car was sold to a Wanganui firm who fitted the Wisconsin motor into a speed boat but the installation turned out to be unsatisfactory. In a deal with Lou Stonnell’s father in Taranaki the unwanted Stutz was swapped for a 1928 Studebaker as this was the middle of the depression and there was no demand for racing cars.

It was 1937 when Lou’s father brought the Stutz to the farm at Lepperton and at that time it was powered by the Roosevelt engine with a three speed gearbox attached to the engine as well as the original Stutz gear box fitted as part of the rear axle. (The two gearboxes connected in tandem giving the machine some nine forward speeds and three reverse.)

During the Second World War when the Stonnell’s farm tractor was taken away by the Government for the war effort, the Stutz became the farm tractor. As the photos show it had smaller diameter wheels fitted, probably because tyres for the Stutz rims would have been impossible to obtain, and it was pressed into service as a hay sweep for bringing the tedded hay from the paddock to the hay stack.

In the late 1950s Dick, Lou’s brother, used the car on the road in Auckland fitted with lights and mudguards and a rear extension to the body, possibly added for WOF requirements, but no doors or windscreen. Sometime after this it returned to the farm and was stored in a shed as other business interests took precedence.

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