Last night I had the wonderful surprise of opening my email and finding amongst the usual flotsam and jetsam of our modern world, a very nice note from the granddaughter of Harry Miller. Needless to say, I was quite honored that she took the time to send me a quick note of thanks for mentioning her grandfather on more than a few occasions. It was also interesting to find out that she is certainly cut from the same bolt of cloth as her grandfather, being an "innovative sort" herself.

I have always felt that we owe a great debt to Mark Dees and Griff Borgeson for their passion and interest in the story of Harry Miller and his wonderful mechanical devices and machines. From the moment I first laid eyes on the Miller adorning the Car and Driver several decades ago, I was hooked. Although I knew something about them, suddenly it all just fell into place.....

It is also no secret that one of my enduring goals is to shed more light upon the American racing scene, especially that of the early decades of the 20th Century. While certainly not remotely in the same league as Dees, Borgeson, Gordon White, Gary Doyle or any number of others you might wish to name, I try. However, I must credit the collective body of knowledge here for being quite a resource when delving into this area of interest.

The note certainly made my evening.

Very cool Don. Receiving that e-mail must have been a "moment".

please let's not forget the likes of buck boudeman, chuck davis, the late bob sutherland and the others that in their passion for unearthing and restoring harry millers finest creations have amassed a huge body of first-hand knowlege ....like harry himself these folks are not want to suffer fools or dwell on folklore and legend....they will find original photos, drawings,tooling,parts, and with the passion and rigor of great archaeologists they will revive in the metal the great machines as harry built them.

Bob Britton showed me a book a couple of days ago...

Typical of the perfectionist car builder, he loves the Miller creations, the various innovations, and I'm sure that's one book that's in very good hands.

Those cars look so complete, so rounded off in their design and execution, something not achieve to the same degree in the later periods. Nor by many of their contemporaries. Great stuff!

In this month of May I'm going through Dees 'Miller Dynasty`another time.
I payed a fortune for that one in the Netherlands back in '83, a fortune for a young student that is.
I still rate it as one of the best buys I ever made.
Wanna see art on wheels? Look at a Miller.

Lucky you Don!

I consider myself lucky with having seen several Millers already and I hope to get a chance to see many more in the future
Harry Miller, A man who'se achievements are largely underrrated by many European race fans.

Henri Greuter

Nine years ago, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts had an expostion called Moving Beauty, a celebration of automotive design as art.

The centerpiece was the ex-Leon Duray Miller 91, on loan from the IMS Museum

I was lucky enough to have counted Mark Dees as a friend and consider his book, "The Miller Dynasty", to be one of the best automotive books yet written.
He would have loved this forum.
Anton

What a treat getting that email must have been. I'm no historian, just a fan, but thank goodness people such as Borgeson have given us the material they have. I first started noticing the name Miller as a kid in the 5th grade reading some of the William Campbell Gault books in my school library... "Dirt Track Summer" I think it was. Later seeing pictures and reading Borgeson's "Golden Age" book, and I've been a big Miller fan since. To me the FWD Miller 91 is the prettiest race car I've ever seen, and the sound ranks right up there with the best also. The stuff is like fine jewelry, and is to me fine art. Being in the arts business, that's not a compliment I hand out lightly.

So much that is good to read in this thread. I am sure that each of us TNF have that special marque or car that stands head and shoulders above the rest. I trust that you understand what I mean, that completely emotional response to a certain piece of machinery that transcends all logic and reason.

For me there are many vintage racing cars that provoke this kind of emotional response by me, but the joy in sitting behind the wheel and driving several Miller's was "the moment" for this member. Very few others have ever even come close.

The Miller cars for me represent a level of artistry that has rarely been equaled, probably never surpassed.

Perhaps I can pick the brains of some of the Miller experts?

Can anyone tell me exactly when Harry Miller joined Gulf Oil? Some background: according to the Miller/Offy website Gulf "took over" the unblown 255ci 4-cylinder project which had been commissioned by Ira Vail in early 1937 (no text I have found makes clear whether "early 1937" refers to when Vail commissioned them or when Gulf took them over). Gulf then supposedly continued with these cars, while also commissioning Miller to design a blown 180ci 6-cylinder - the rear-engined RE4.

The Indy rules for 1937 had been known since July 1936, while the AAA did not officially announce their adoption of the new International Formula until January 1937 - although this was widely expected, the only doubt being over the exact formula to be applied. So, by early 1937, Miller should have known that a 255ci engine would be well below the 274.5 ci limit of the International Formula: why build a smaller one?

(I'm quoting cubic inches rather than cubic centimetres, because Miller would have worked that way)

Anyway - back to my original question. I have - thanks to Google Books (sorry Doug!) - found two contemporary US magazine references which seem to say that Miller had already joined Gulf during 1936. I can't verify the exact dates of these, as they're only snippet views, which I've had to work on using a bit of guesswork at times but here are the quotes:

"Big Ed" Wintergust, one of the most beloved and colorful figures in the automobile racing game for the last seventeen years has been named official auto racing representative of the Gulf Oil Corporation.

Earlier in the year Harry A. Miller, famous builder of racing engines, was appointed to head Gulf's Experimental Engine Division and the appointment of Wintergust rounds out Gulf's representation on the speedways of the nation. Wintergust will be attached to the Special Engine Division.

Motor Age Vol 56, page 82. No exact date, though.

It is understood that Harry Miller, although busily engaged in designing a small, low-priced passenger car to run 50 mpg and a delivery car along similar lines for the American Bantam Car Co. (in old Austin plant), Butler, Pa., has also agreed to build a car or two for these races.

Not sure which "these races" are, but it's from Motor Vol 66, page 18. Again - can't date it, but in both cases Google Books says they're from 1936. Did Motor and Motor Age change their volume numbers in January and July?

EDIT: There is also a reference in the Pittsburgh Press (May 22nd 1938) which says Miller joined Gulf in 1937, but the only other newspaper mentions I can find about him being connected with Gulf refer to the Gulf Marsh Buggy - two items in August 1937.

I'll have more to say when I get home (have to post from a remote computer) and can look up a few things, but the "255ci 4-cylinder project started by Ira Vail" was already entered at Indy in 1936 as the Miller-Hibbard, so the Miller/Offy website is wrong about "early 1937", as was Mark Dees in "The Miller Dynasty" iirc (probably the source for the error). The Miller-Hibbard Indy Car never appeared, was probably not finished in time and went under with the whole Miller-Hibbard road car project. It was resurrected by Miller while he had Gulf sponsorship - not sure if he ever joined the company. You don't find the word "Gulf" in connection with the Miller racing cars in any official documents, not as an entrant, sponsor or car make, that's why I usually never use the moniker "Gulf-Miller" - it was "Miller", pure and simple. Ed Wintergust, by the way, was a Richfield Oil rep in the late twenties/early thirties. Not sure what to think of the Gulf blurb here.

Don,

I also have learned what I know of Miller from Dees and Borgeson, but have been under the impression that Ted Miller was Harry's only child, and that Ted had no children. Does this granddaughter perhaps have some Miller material unknown to Miller enthusiasts, and are there any other living descendants of Harry?

Woody

I do not seem to be able to make much sense or use of Google Books, so can you perhaps post a larger excerpt? I would be interested in knowing what "these races" refers to, but everything else clearly indicates this to refer to the Miller-Hibbard enterprise. I have gone through the relevant chapter(s) of "The Miller Dynasty" again, but apart from marvelling about the advanced design of these cars again, it has left me much confused, as before. First, all of the pictures do only show single-seater cars, so I presume the two-seater was never built - no surprise here, but the pictures also show a spherical fuel tank, as was used only during the fuel limit era, i.e. up to and including 1936! Perhaps the single seater was planned from the start, for the dirt track races? It would also help to explain why the engine capacity was so well under the limit (which was still 366 ci at the time, not 274!), because the Miller/Offy 255 was considered to be at the practical limit of what was still "usable power" on dirt. Back in those days, most dirt tracks were still really "dirt", not the clay that is the norm today, so that the surface was often very slippery, and too much power wasn't of much use. In 1936, there were literally only a handful of 255s in existence!

Otherwise, Dees is remarkably fuzzy about most dates in "Part Ten: Harry Miller at Large 1933-1943"! Roughly, he has the following chronology: November '34 to late '35 aero engines with Floyd Brown in New York, and the clandestine Indy Ford project "on the side", then late '35 to early '37 Miller-Hibbard for American Bantam at Butler (PA), with the Wilson marine engine "on the side", and "mid-1937" till "the end of the summer" in '39 Gulf Research Development Co. at Harmarville (PA). There were a few more intricacies involved, but I believe this to be quite reliable, i.e. no involvement with Gulf before late spring/early summer 1937, otherwise I'm sure they would have tried to enter the Miller-Hibbard design in one form or another at Indy that year.

Google Books can be bloody frustrating, Michael. The info is there, but not accessible. I produced those two short quotes by a mixture of inspired guesswork and sweating blood! If you're lucky, the snippet view will give you a glimpse of the next line or two: you can then search for that exact phrase and maybe get a bit further down the page. Unfortunately it will almost always stop at the end of a paragraph and won't give you the first line of the next one ...

So, if I understand you correctly, the cars which the Miller/Offy site says were commissioned by Vail had actually already been designed, but not built? Given that, I take your point about the 255ci engines - obviously not intended to run under the forthcoming International Formula.

You mentioned in your earlier post that you weren't sure Miller had joined Gulf. Apart from the Wintergust item above, you might find this interesting:

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=dikbA...+gulf&hl=en

It reads to me like a slightly warmed-over Gulf press release.

And there's still the apparent date discrepancy re Motor and Motor Age: all I could find about Wintergust was a couple of references to Richfield Oil (one of which inked him directly to Miller in 1931) and a Jerry Entin TNF post which referred to him as the unofficial mayor of Gasoline Alley!

Yes, it seems Miller WAS under contract with Gulf, what I was trying to say was that he entered the cars under his own name, and as "Miller Specials" - no mention of Gulf in connection with the racing cars. As for the 255 ci engines, they were certainly designed in 1936, and I would think that at least the engines must've been built that year already. What Dees and others have overlooked is the 1936 Indy entry of Ira Vail - contemporary reports have it as an "unnamed Detroit entry", which is puzzling since Miller and Hibbard were in Butler, and Vail was usually based in New York, but the Jack Fox Indy bible has the entry as "Miller-Hibbard Special", which ties in perfectly with what we know about Miller, Hibbard and Vail. Also, pictures show the car to have had the legend "miller-hibbard NEW YORK" on the tachometer, exactly like the Miller-Hibbard drawings, which Dees merely tries to explain away.

A couple of other thoughts: "Wintergust, one of the most beloved and colorful figures in the automobile racing game for the last seventeen years" - Richfield started to sponsor racing in 1919, so that could possibly mean the blurb was from 1936. However, I'm not sure Wintergust was alredy on the company's payroll then.

Reading in Gene Banning's "Speedway" (thank you, Jerry! ), he makes specific mention of the adoption of the new formula: "By late fall [of 1937] the plant was ready for operation and work got underway on the new race cars. Just then AAA announced adoption of the International Grand Prix formula of 3 liters (183 CID) for supercharged engines, and 4.5 liters (274 CID) unsupercharged; riding mechanics would no longer be required." Banning goes on to describe how the engine and bodies were then "scaled down". Given that the book was written in close cooperation with Art Sparks, whose memory appears to have linked those two events, that looks like conclusive evidence to me! What's your source for January '37?

Sarasota Herald, Jan 19th 1937. There are similar items in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times on the same date, but I don't have access to those (too broke to pay for them!)

And re Art Sparks: as I understand it he was offered a "job for life" by Thorne after Indy 1937 after Joel had lost interest in the Oldfield-Marmon project (which, at 6 litres, was a dead duck even before it was "finished") and been impressed by by the performance of the Sparks Big Six. So by that time the new formula was definitely known: in addition it seems to me that the AAA had to keep patching things while waiting for the CSI, who finally fixed the formula in October 1936, having been trying since May 1935. When you consider all the palaver about the Roosevelt and Los Angeles Raceways in 1936, it wouldn't have taken a genius to work out that the AAA wanted to move to the European formula ASAP.

So either Sparks' memory is at fault or Banning has got it wrong.

I think I remember reading somewhere that Preston Tucker got the idea for his car from Miller during the 1935 debacle at Indy. Miller supposedly showed Tucker some drawings he'd made for a rear-engined passenger car, and Tucker expanded on the idea after Miller passed away in 1943.

If this is true, even the concept of the Tucker Torpedo didn't originate with Tucker, but you have to give him credit for knowing a good thing when he saw it.

Has anyone else heard this story? It's been years since I've seen a copy of Dees' book, which would probably be a good place to start.


Dan



Dan