History: 1917 Miller Golden Submarine

Rapid replica cruises the Milwaukee Mile …

Not surprising that as early as 1917 racers were looking for every aerodynamic advantage to gain speed while also trying to prevent their own demise.

Barney Oldfield was among the most successful early racers and barnstormers who set speed record after speed record, many on dirt mile and half-mile tracks across the United States, always chomping on a big cigar and making a show of his speed while projecting a larger than life persona. He was a showman.

But his friend and racing cohort Bob Burman died in April of 1916 at Riverside, Calif., in a racing accident and Oldfield realized that open cockpit racers could be hazardous to your health. He dreamed up an idea of an enclosed racer and took it to Harry A. Miller and Fred Offenhauser, who were just beginning to build their reputation for engine and race car design.

Their solution was the 1917 Miller Golden Submarine, a sleek torpedo-shaped racer with a fully enclosed cockpit its thin slit windows covered by wire mesh to keep rocks and other track debris from blinding, or injuring the driver, Oldfield.

According to Jim Dillon’s story in the Jan/Feb 2015 issue of Antique Automobile this first Miller engine was based (some might say copied) from a more advanced Peugeot-style engine in one of Burman’s racers, a 1914 Th. Schneider, a French racer made by the Societe anonyme des automobiles Th. Schneider. The company exited until 1930.

Whatever the case, the Miller engine ended up as a 4.7-liter 289-cu.-in. four-cylinder SOHC aluminum alloy water-cooled engine. This crossflow designed powerplant also featured desmodromic valves, dual intake ports for each cylinder along with dual spark plugs and magnetos.

That setup was powerful enough to push the Submarine to between 136 and 145 mph, but for Oldfield’s purposes, 100+ mph on dirt where the records were to be set and the barn-storming crowds would pay money to see this golden rocket perform.

The Golden Submarine rode on a 104-in. wheelbase and weighed roughly 1,600 lbs. as its body was lightweight aluminum. For safety, beyond the wire mesh wind screens it featured an internal roll bar to protect the driver in a rollover, which was common, especially on dirt tracks.

Some reports say the Submarine was tested for aerodynamics, although wind tunnels were rare at the time. Still, Oldfield reportedly said there was so little wind inside the racer he could smoke a cigar (his favorite legal pastime) while driving 100 mph.

The unique gold color? That was reported to be a bronze dust mixed with lacquer, but there’s no official record of its makeup.

Cost for the car was said to be $15,000 at the time, about $391,000 today.

While the Golden Submarine set plenty of speed records in 1917, its racing life was fairly short. Its first race was June 16, 1917, at the Chicago Board Speedway in Maywood, Ill., where it set the track record of 107 mph and averaged 104 mph before an engine failure sidelined it.

Record keeping was far from perfect at the time, but several sources say it made 35 starts that year with 17 wins, two seconds, and two thirds. Impressive!

Just a week after its debut the Golden Submarine ran three match races on the Milwaukee Mile’s dirt track. It beat famous racer and 1915 Indy 500 winner Ralph DePalma in a Packard all three times.

Famously it made it to the Indianapolis 500 and qualified in 19^th position only to suffer a rocker arm problem on lap 8 and had to drop out, finishing last. Oldfield was the entrant for the car, but Roscoe Sarles drove it in the race.

The car ran 19 more races that year with three wins before being sold, says author Sigur Whitaker on the firstsuperspeedway.com site. At one point the car was badly damaged in a race in Atlanta where it crashed into a late and then later in the season a gas tank fire destroyed the body, but the chassis was saved and reworked as they often were in those early racing days.

Not sure exactly when the racer’s last race was, but Whitaker tracked it to a barn in Joliet, Ill. There it was destroyed when J. Allen Sloan’s barn burned to the ground. The racer was never resurrected, but several replicas have been created, including the one I spied at the Milwaukee Mile (now asphalt) this summer.

This one is part of the Brumos Collection from Jacksonville, Fla., owned by A. Dano Davis, and toured the track, belching smoke and looking all the part of a 1917 racer. Cars then notoriously drank, or burned, oil. Imagine how slick the bricks were at Indianapolis after 33 racers dropped oil for hours.

Still, this was a treat to see in action! Wonder how fast Oldfield could have made it go on asphalt!