Vanderbilt Cup Races

In 2011, I met car rally enthusiast Steve McKelvie at the Lime Rock Historic Festival. I recently discovered two blog posts by Steve McKelvie concerning the Alco Black Beast. This SteveMcKelvie.com post focused on artist Carlo Demand's painting of the Alco Black Beast and the Corbin Cannonball during the 1910 Vanderbilt Cup Race.

Enjoy,

Howard Kroplick

Howard Kroplick Book Signing at Book Revue, 7:00 pm, Friday, March 14, 2014, Huntington, NY

Velocity Channel’s AmeriCarna Vanderbilt Cup Race Episode on Thursday at 10:00 am

Carlo Demand and the Alco “Black Beast” on Long Island

Posted on October 6, 2011

At this year’s Lime Rock Historic Festival I had the opportunity to see the Alco “Black Beast” and to meet its owner, Howard Kroplick.  This is a very impressive car and Howard Kroplick is the perfect owner for this car.  I posted a story about the Alco and my visit with Howard Kroplick on this website on September 9, 2011.

Recently I acquired a great book called “Carlo Demand in Motion and Color”.  This is a compilation of about 50 of Carlo Demand’s paintings of automobile racing from 1895 to 1956.  One of those images, which I have shown below, is a painting of Harry Grant driving an Alco racer in the 1910 Vanderbilt Race on Long Island.

The 1910 Vanderbilt Cup on Long Island had a field of 30 cars including cars driven by Ray Harroun and Louis Chevrolet.  It has been reported that there were about 300,000 spectators at the race.  Harry Grant and his Alco won the 278 mile race with an average speed of 65.18 mph.  During the race the spectators crowded the road like a Portugese WRC rally and at the end of the race there were 20 people in the hospital, 2 spectators were dead, and two riding mechanics died.

For more information on the Alco race car, Howard Kroplick, and the Vanderbilt Cup races, please see my post on September 9, 2011.