The beast that was the Bearcat

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This article was published 14/12/2007 (6591 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

STUTZ Bearcat was one of the most exciting, imaginative and famous car names. It conjured up images of raccoon coats, brisk autumn afternoons and rich, young blades whisking their dates to the football game.

Harry C. Stutz did not plan to become an automobile manufacturer; rather, he had intended to go into the parts business.

In 1910, he established the Stutz Auto Parts Co. in Indianapolis to produce a combination differential-transmission he had developed.

To prove his new product’s robustness, in 1911, Stutz built a car fitted with his new transaxle and entered it in the first Indianapolis 500-mile race. To Stutz’s delight, his driver Gil Anderson finished in 11th place, averaging 110 kilometres an hour, an outstanding showing for a new, untried car.

That first car generated such good publicity that, within weeks, Stutz had set up the Ideal Motor Car Co. to manufacture what he unabashedly called “the car that made good in a day.”

He renamed it the Stutz Motor Car Co. in 1913.

The best-known of all Stutz models, the Bearcat was introduced in 1912 and was a fierce competitor for its archrival the Mercer Raceabout. The Bearcat had a huge, four-cylinder T-head (inlet valves in one side of the cylinder block and exhausts in the other), 50-horsepower, 5.4-litre Wisconsin engine.

Early Bearcats were the starkest of sports cars. There were fenders, a “doghouse” hood over the engine, two seats, a barrel-like fuel tank, a real trunk and a couple of spare tires.

The driver had a monocle windshield, but the passenger got no protection.

Despite minimal bodywork, the Bearcat weighed a healthy 2,041 kilograms. Its wheelbase was 3,048 millimetres, it rode on giant 4.50 x 34-inch tires and stood 1,219 mm high at the hood.

Performance figures for cars of that vintage are often rare; however, in this case, they do exist. Tom McCahill, Mechanix Illustrated‘s intrepid car writer, tested a mint-condition 1914 Stutz Bearcat in September 1951. He reported a top speed of almost 130 km/h and a zero-to-96-km/h time of 29.2 seconds.

He also pointed out that Bearcats required rugged drivers.

“They would go where you headed them and keep going, but you still needed lots of arm moxie to turn them. And plenty of beef to throw out the clutch and push down the brake. You couldn’t ride those old-time clutches, Buster. It takes a good 75 to 100 pounds of pressure to throw them out.”

And the two-wheel mechanical brakes? Never one for understatement, McCahill said they took “… enough pressure to squash a rock.”

Stutz continued entering his cars in many competitions, with the Indianapolis 500 being a sentimental favourite. Stutz cars finished third in 1913 and 1915. And the Stutz “White Squadron” racing team with drivers clad in white and driving white Stutzes became the scourge of the American racing circuit in the years leading up to the 1920s.

The Stutz’s exploits weren’t confined to the racetrack. The owner of a new 1916 Bearcat brought the car to his New York dealer complaining that the Mercers were trouncing him in the streets. The Stutz public relations department, sensing an opportunity, had the car’s engine fitted to another car that was then driven coast to coast by long-distance driver Erwin George Baker.

He flogged the car across the continent in 11 days and 7 1/2 hours, earning a new transcontinental speed record for Stutz and a new nickname, “Cannonball Baker,” for himself.

He liked the name so much that he had it copyrighted and went on to become the premier cross-country record driver, eventually setting 143 long-distance marks.

Stutz lost control of the company through stock manipulations and left in 1919. The Bearcat was continued, but sales went into a slide. By 1924, the Bearcat name was dropped, although it would return later.

The Stutz company continued to build some high-performance cars, including the Black Hawk speedster, which was the American Automobile Association racing champion in 1927.

In 1928, a Black Hawk finished second in the LeMans, France 24-hour endurance race, the best American car showing until a Ford GT40 won it in 1966.

In the early 1930s, unable to afford a huge, multi-cylinder engine such as the Cadillac, Packard and Marmon V12s and V16s, Stutz fitted double overhead camshafts and four valves per cylinder to its Vertical Eight, creating the fabulous 156-hp, 32-valve Stutz DV-32.

The DV-32 was guaranteed to exceed 161 km/h. A shorter version, the Super Bearcat, with a 2,946-mm wheelbase rather than the standard Bearcat’s 3,146 mm, was even faster.

Unfortunately, the Great Depression finished Stutz, as it did so many others. Stutz ceased production in 1934.

The Stutz Bearcat remains, however, the supreme embodiment of that swashbuckling, romantic era of bathtub gin and a dance they called the Charleston.

— CanWest News Service