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"America has at last come into her own. An American car, designed by an American, built by Americans in an American factory, of American material, and driven by an American, finally won America's classic contest in this the fourth year of the stubborn perseverance of Americans to place American cars on a speed level with the product of Europe:' This jingoistic outburst from the 29 October 1908 issue of The Automobile was prompted by the accomplishments of the determined young men in the accompanying photograph. On 24 October George Robertson, the driver, and Glenn Etheridge, his riding mechanic, took the checkered flag as the first homegrown winners of the Vanderbilt Cup, America's first great international auto race. The Vanderbilt race was begun in 1904 in response to a depressing fact: American automobiles were technologically inferior to those built in Europe. No one was more aware of this than William K. Vanderbilt. An early and ardent enthusiast for the new technology, "Willie K" could afford the best cars in the world and he knew they were not made in the United States. He sponsored the Vanderbilt Cup races, he said, because "I felt the United States was far behind other nations in the automotive industry, and I wanted the country to catch up. I wanted to bring foreign drivers and their cars over here in the hope that America would wake up."
The races were run on courses laid out on public roads in Nassau County, Long Island, and the first three appeared to justify Vanderbilt's concerns about American inferiority. The 1904 contest was won by a French Panhard, while the 1905 and 1906 runnings went to French Darracqs. The 1906 race saw a ray of hope, however, as the fastest lap of the race was turned in by a Locomobile, built in Bridgeport, Connecticut. However, eleven failures of its American-made Diamond tires kept the car out of the money. Crowd control in the first three races was so bad that the 1907 race was called off. The race was back in 1908, as organizers promised to better restrain the spectators. Locomobile was back also. Its 1906 car now carried the number sixteen, and ran on French-made Michelin tires with easy-to-change demountable rims. This time there...