Indy time machine: 70 mph in a 1916 race car

Hagerty Sidedrafts: Cars | Classics | Racing

"Literally, he opened this trunk and saw his life set before him," says Hagerty West Coast Editor at Large, Aaron Robinson, in this fascinating episode about Brian Blain of the Blain Motorsports Foundation--home to a remarkable collection of pre-World War One racing cars in Visalia, California.

The trunk that Aaron tells us about was full of mementos of Harry Sprague's time as a race car driver in California, more than one hundred years ago. Sprague was an older friend of the Blain family, who had no children of his own and died in the 1980's. As a young man, Blain inherited Harry's trunk.

"He opens the trunk and he finds all of this stuff," Aaron tells us in this episode of Sidedrafts. "... An old racing license that's been expired by more than sixty years. He finds these gauntlet gloves, big goggles, photographs, some old yellowed newspaper clippings, and he finds a red jersey and across the front of it is the word "National.""

That discovery led Brian on a lifelong quest that is the subject of this podcast.

"Blain owns and operates a stable of pre-World War I race cars that he puts in front of the public whenever he can," writes Aaron in his latest Hagerty article. "With the offer of a mechanician’s seat in a 106-year-old car as it circled a 109-year-old speedway, I went."