A splendid Stutz

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While the Amilcar we featured recently was sold new across the Atlantic, there could be no mistaking its French origins. In America, they did car manufacture very differently. Even before the First World War, Uncle Sam’s affiliation with big cars fitted with suitably sizeable engines was taking hold, ideal for eating up the long, lonely expanses of a road across dusty rural backwaters, and Harry C Stutz was leading the way.

Inspired by the Mercer, Stutz’s first attempts at designing a production car bearing his own name took off after his racing prototype achieved an 11th-place finish in the 1911 Indianapolis 500. When the Bearcat production model appeared the following year, it was only a matter of time before its performance capabilities would make it legendary.

Some Stutzes were more civilised than the Bearcat, perhaps enough so to be considered genuinely practical cars, but it will be for that reason that the Bearcat will always be shrouded in intrigue while its sensible siblings are kept in the shadows. More’s the pity, since the roadster and torpedo-bodied Stutzes were still powerful machines capable of delivering plenty of excitement at the wheel.

Zack Stiling sees that a 1917 Stutz Series R roadster gets its long-overdue turn in the spotlight in the July issue of The Automobile, available now.

Words and photographs by Zack Stiling.

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