He brought another Model H to the 1909 race, but this time crushed the differential against a railroad cross-tie at speed. Worried about getting truly turned around, he grabbed four hours of sleep until daybreak, and ended up in fourth, three-and-a-half hours behind Black Bess, the winning White Steamer. Hamlin started his campaign in a Model H Franklin "Greyhound" at the inaugural 1908 race.He jumped out in front, building a lead of several hours while still in California, but got lost in the desert due to the fact that the race started at midnight. When the desert race was suggested, it was my chance to put air cooling on top, if I could win." "My competitors, all of whom sold water-cooled cars, would tell my prospects that if air cooling was so good, the rest of the cars would be using it." So as promoters had been, if not since time immemorial, then at least for a few years, he decided to race the car to prove it. "It was not easy to sell air cooling," he wrote in Five Years on the Desert. Los Angeles was home to renowned Southern California Franklin distributor Ralph Hamlin who, from 1905 through the company's post-Depression bankruptcy, did more than any other individual to promote the brand. The ones we know well are mostly East Coast machines, or Indianapolis 500 entrants West Coast veterans are rarer, even ones that ran in "the toughest road race ever held anywhere," the Los Angeles to Phoenix desert race. None of them have been forgotten, exactly, but some are better remembered than others.
Outnumbered in the Oughts and early Teens by European competitors, they were the sharp end of the American auto industry, competing with established makes like Mercedes, Fiat, Delage and Peugeot in order to prove that we could take on the best from Europe, and win.įew cars from that handful of survivors have endured without either controversy or restoration. The Marmon Wasp, Great Race Thomas Flyer, "Old 16" Locomobile, Alco Black Beast, Corbin Cannonball, Packard Grey Wolf: each is inseparable from the stories of the men who drove them and the almost inconceivable risks and trials they endured. There are few survivors from the Gilded Age of racing, and each one stands apart from all other period cars, no matter what they are.
Riding Ralph Hamlin's 1911 Franklin Special desert racerĭecember, 2010 - Words and Photography by David Traver Adolphus Max Axen has forwarded this 2010 Hemmings article by David Traver Adolphus on one of the "few survivors of the Guided Age"-Ralph Hamlin's 1911 Franklin Special desert racer.
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