It’s a chicken and egg problem.
You build a car, but there is no where to drive. FAST.
Early motorcar engineers liked to test their inventions on flat land with hard-packed surfaces to increase their odds for recovery in case things went wrong. Think ‘Top Gun’ training on land.
Daytona and Ormond Beach, Florida, had a 500 foot wide by 25 mile long stretch of hard packed sand that served as the proving grounds for American auto manufacturers in the early twentieth century. Henry Ford, Ransom Eli, and Alexander Winton raced many of their earliest cars along this stretch of the Atlantic Ocean. As automobiles became more affordable, the game of Speed Trials began. The first Winton Bullet (Alexander Winton) made its racing debut at Ormond Beach in March 1903 in a race against the Oldsmobile Pirate (Eli Olds).
Anyone who has every ridden a motorcycle and hit a patch of sand or ice on the road knows the jolt of uncertain traction. Imagine racing early motorcycles and hot rods on sand, just like granddad described.
T.r.o.g., aka The Race of Gentlemen, is a series of events in time travel for motorcycle and hot rod racers. Held at multiple locations around the United States, the festival of pre-1947 motorcycles and pre-1936 automobiles running Speed Trials is a great show of spontaneous enthusiasm and real honest motoring passions. Many of the TROG events are still held at beaches, but in 2019, the event came to pavement at the Santa Barbara Drags where the motoring cognoscenti gathered to gun their engines and show their hot rods. History was alive, with smells, sight, sound, and culture binding all who entered the California speed trials or displayed their cherished heirloom or customized works of road art.
Let’s go racing!