Beschreibung:

Stutz will forever be “The Car That Made Good in a Day”, a reputation assembled by Harry Stutz – as he assembled the automobiles that bore his name – around the performance of the rude, rugged Wisconsin T-head four-cylinder powered race car that came home eleventh in the 1911 Indianapolis 500. If it weren’t for the E.L. Cord-produced Model J, the Duesenberg brothers would be a racing footnote. Harry Arminius Miller would still be a genius, and Finley Robertson Porter’s Mercer would merit its place at the top of the list of great sports cars, but no one marque has the stature, profile and image of Harry C. Stutz’s eponymous automobiles. D. Cameron Peck, a pioneering collector whose choices in the Fifties and Sixties were almost unlimited, observed in the Spring 1963 issue of Automobile Quarterly (only the fifth issue of AQ, placement alone which signifies the importance of Stutz in automobile history): “The name evokes a kaleidoscope of conflicting images from those who were motorists when the make was still alive. It was often a car of controversy, both admired and despised during the twenty-three years (1912-1935) of its active existence. It enjoyed brilliant successes and suffered spectacular failures, but time has done its strange and defining work with Stutz. The debits and deficiencies are all but forgotten and it is considered one of America’s great marques – one of the few whose products were treasured as both antiques and classics.” Stutz had two complementary eras. The first came under Harry Stutz. A later existence, after stock promoter Alan Ryan seized and then ceded control, came under Bethlehem Steel magnate Charles Schwab with Fred Moskovics guiding Stutz’s destiny. Stutz “made good in a day” with Gil Anderson at the wheel of the Wisconsin-powered machine entered by the Ideal Motor Car Company. Anderson completed 200 laps (albeit at a speed some 7 mph slower than Ray Harroun’s Marmon Wasp) behind marques whose names have faded into footnotes – Lozier, National, Simplex, Knox and Jackson among them – while besting Mercer, National, Benz, Pope-Hartford and J.I. Case (which soon proved to be more successful building farm tractors.) Other competition soon followed, most notably the “White Squadron” of specially built Stutz race cars which toured the country in the late Teens and the incomparable iron man, Earl G. “Cannonball” Baker, who drove a Bearcat from San Diego to New York in 1915 in 11 days, 7 hours and 15 minutes. Harry Stutz intuitively understood marketing and made the most of his cars’ scrappy, aggressive, elemental character. They were not elegant, nor sophisticated. D. Cameron Peck commented: “Bearcat and Bulldog were among the model names that appeared in this era, and they typify perfectly the character of the cars themselves: fast, tough and just a bit crude. The carriage trade looked the other way with a shudder.” The Stutz Series K was one of the last designed and built under Harry Stutz’s direct supervision before he was shunted aside by the Ryan. Powered by the T-head Wisconsin four with 361 cubic inches, dual ignition and four valves per cylinder, it developed 60 brake horsepower at only 1,500 rpm and immense torque at any speed. The 3-speed transmission was integral with the rear axle and differential, a system that Harry Stutz designed himself very early in the marque’s history and which he favored. Suspension was by semi-elliptical leaf springs front and rear and the steering wheel was on the righthand side, an arrangement which Stutz preferred for years. The Series K was offered in both stripped Bearcat style and in the somewhat more refined roadster style body. Both cars were essentially the same, both mechanically and in price, and offered the same experience of brute Stutz performance, but at least with the roadster the dashing driver and passenger got a somewhat more effective top and a taller, folding windshield. The Paine Collection’s 1920 Stutz Series K Roadster is powered by the early