Racing History Minute - August 12, 1951
Stock Car Racing History
From: https://web.archive.org/web/20080105113739/www.uaw-chrysler.com/images/news/motorcity250.html
This article references Thompson's daughter giving the winning trophy to the Chrysler Museum. The museum closed to the public at the end of 2012. I wonder what will happen to the trophy now. ( http://wpchryslermuseum.org )
Hemi power won NASCAR's Motor City 250
DETROIT The first Hemi-powered Chrysler racing victory came in the company s own backyard on Aug. 12, 1951, at the NASCAR Motor City 250.
Howard W. Tommy Thompson, driving a new 1951 Chrysler New Yorker powered by the 331-cubic-inch Firepower V8, won a wild, late-race duel with the legendary Curtis Turner. The two smashed into each other, damaging Turners Olds 88. Turner tried to take his steaming car to the end, but he had to give up, finishing ninth after leading 92 laps.
Thompson led 58 laps on the one-mile dirt track near Woodward Avenue and Eight Mile Road in Detroit, finishing 37 seconds ahead of Joe Eubanks. The third-place finisher was six laps behind in a race where the average speed was just 57.5 mph.
Thompsons crew chief was Wild Bill Cantrell, the famous unlimited hydroplane pilot and winner of the 1949 APBA Gold Cup. Thompson, who won $5,000, made just three pit stops for fuel and tires in the four-hour, 20-minute race and never lifted the hood on the reliable Chrysler.
The event was held on the Michigan State Fairgrounds horse racing track to commemorate the citys 250th anniversary (the day in 1701 that the French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac landed at Detroit).
It was a golden opportunity for NASCAR co-founder Bill France to put on his stock car extravaganza in front of the automobile industry, and the idea worked like a charm. Many auto industry executives got their first look at this new form of racing as more than 16,000 fans who were packed into the fairgrounds stands cheered for 15 different makes of cars.
In 2006, at a car show held on the grounds of the Walter P. Chrysler Museum in Auburn Hills, Mich., Tommy Thompsons daughter donated the Motor City 250 winners trophy that her father had won to the museum. At the presentation, she and Museum Manager Barry Dressel stood next to a 1951 Chrysler Saratoga Hemi.
That car was painted like one that Bill Sterling had raced in 1951's grueling 1,900-mile La Carrera Panamericana, known in the U.S. as the Mexican Road Race. Sterling won the stock class and finished third overall behind a Ferrari.
That race was one of the last long-distance events run over public highways and had been organized to celebrate the completion of the Mexican section of the Pan-American Highway, a massive road project desinged to link the Americas. It was run in multiple stages over a six-day period in November and traversed the length of Mexico. Cars came from all over the world to compete, and the event was particularly attractive to U.S. car manufacturers as a durability showcase for their cars.
When the marathon finally ended, Sterling was just over 12 minutes behind the Ferrari 212 piloted by Formula One World Champion Alberto Ascari and 20 minues behind the winning Ferrari team car, driven by Piero Taruffi and Le Mans winner Luigi Chinetti.
 PHOTO: Richard Kavanaugh Tommy Thompson's daughter presents the driver's 1951 Motor City 250 trophy to Walter P. Chrysler Museum Manager Barry Dressel as they stand next to a 1951 Chrysler Saratoga like the one that Bill Sterling drove in that year's Mexican Road Race.
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Sterling led five other Chrysler to the finish, including a Hemi Saratoga driven by Indy 500 star Tony Bettenhausen.
Earlier that same year, in February, Mechanix Illustrated magazine's car tester, Tom McCahill, had taken a new Chrysler New Yorker V8 to the sands of Daytona Beach where he won the NASCAR Speed Week trophy as the fastest stock American car.
In spite of the rough and sticky condition of the sand, and what he called a "stiff 25-mile quartering wind," McCahill managed to average 100.13 mph in his two-way run.
Even though it had to propel a heavy car (McCahill's New Yorker weighed 4,250 pounds) with barn-door aerodynamics, the Hemi engine gave the big Chrysler excellent performance. The engine produced 180 hp, impressive in those days.
updated by @tmc-chase: 11/19/19 01:56:50PM
