Old 16

America’s first international racing champ is alive and well inside The Henry Ford. To earn its place inside that hallowed museum, the journey of that Locomobile race car best known as “Old 16” took it through the early Vanderbilt Cup Races (especially the 1908 event) and eventually to the hands of famed automotive artist Peter Helck.

As documented in John Bentley’s book “Great American Automobiles” (Prentice-Hall Inc., 1957) millionaire sportsman William K. Vanderbilt, Jr., kept road-raced automobiles in Europe and believed that such contests resulted in cars made there being superior to American-made cars. Working through the American Automobile Association (AAA), Vanderbilt hoped to change that situation by putting up a silver cup as the prize for races in the United States that featured American and international race cars.

In “The Best of Old Cars Vol. 1” (Krause Publications, 1978), automotive historian Henry Austin Clark, Jr., explained, “Arranging to have a public race on the public roads of Nassau County, Long Island, must have been quite an undertaking. In any case, William K. and his friends were able to swing the deal. The 28.44-mile course was a big pie wedge with the point in Queens. There were controls taken and slow passage through