Vanderbilt Cup Races

Driver and Auto Builder J. Walter Christie’s Front Wheel Drive Christie Racer 1905-1906. Lewis Strang Riding Mechanic and Race Car Driver. Keeping American Automotive Racing History Alive!

That’s John Walter Christie driving his own front wheel drive Christie Race with Nicholas Leichtener as his mechanician. Since there is no assigned number on the car, I think this was probably a practice run for the American Elimination Trials scheduled for September 23, 1905 prior to the actual Vanderbilt Cup Race. Therefore, I’ll guess the date to be a day or two before that. The location could be the intersection of Glen Cove Road and Northern Blvd. with the Bull’s Head Hotel in the background.

Looks like the front wheel drive Christie. Looks closer to the 1905 model during the American Elimination Trial (23Sep1905) driven by George Robertson/Nicholas Leichtener team, taking the turn by Bulls Head Hotel at Glen Cove Rd and Northern Blvd in Greenvale.

George Robertson was the first American to win the 1908 Vanderbilt Cup Race with Alco Old 16

My submissions below, sorry about any redundancies.

Just going to go off the top of my head with a guess this weekend and see how I do.

I’ll say this is Walter Christie in his front wheel drive racer during the Sept. 23rd 1905 American Elimination Trials with George Robertson as mechanician. This looks to be on the Bull’s Head turn at Northern and Glen Cove Rd.

This is John Walter Christie passing the Bulls Head Hotel in his Christie front wheel drive race car.  The photo is in the National Automotive History Collection of the Detroit Public Library.  This is an odd photo, notice the car shows neither it’s Elimination Race number 6 or it’s Vanderbilt Cup race number 11.  Walter is driving without his usual leather cap, you can see his hair in the photo.  The passenger is unknown to me, perhaps he gave a ride to one of his investors (H.H.Tredwell) or a journalist?  It is not George Robertson, who drove the Christie in the Elimination Race. George never seemed to get the hang on driving a front wheel drive car, so Walter put himself back behind the wheel for the main race. The date of the photo could be anywhere from Sept 22 to Oct 13, 1905.

A Christie race car. J.W.Christie also built at least one passenger car and one taxi. The hood for the taxi was in the loft of the Long Island Auto Museum for decades and in good shape. Austin had no idea where the rest of the car was or if it even existed. I al;ways thought I should buy that hood but was faced with the problem of where to store it once I got it home.
Austin also had a good collection of sales catalogs issued by the Christie company that he had borrowed from someone whose relatives had invested in the company or knew J.W. Christie. All memories from decades ago.

Mystery Foto #14… The race car is a 1905 Christie front wheel drive. The driver in this photo is probably George Robertson because this image was taken on a practice day and the race numbers were not yet applied. George drove it in practice only. In the 1905 Vanderbilt Cup Race J. Walter Christie himself was the driver. The mechanician for Christie was Nicolas Leichtener. The date of the photo was probably October 13, 1905 which was a practice day prior to race day.
And as I said above Christie drove the race car in the 1905 Vanderbilt Cup.

A closeup of Lewis Strang, he doesn’t resemble the mystery mechanician.

The passenger alongside Christie may be his investor Henry Treadwell.  The photo I have of Mr Treadwell here looks somewhat similar.  Mr Treadwell actually took possession of the Christie Taxi upon the collapse of Christie’s car business. The Treadwell family preserved one of the very few collections of Christie automobile material in existence. The collection contains one of the Christie Automobile brochures, 18 pages, very nicely produced by The Trow Press in NY.  The famous artist Peter Helck produced a color drawing of one of Christie’s racers for the Treadwells in 1961. I am the caretaker of this collection at this time.

On further examination, I’m not sure it’s Mr Treadwell in the car.  The man in the car appears to have a mustache.

Regarding the other person with Christie, could he be Walter Jones ?  Jones had worked with Christie in the past.

I would like to know more about this remarkable car. I thought it might be a steam car, but only one steam car ever ran in the VCRs, and it didn’t look like that.