This 1908 Vanderbilt Cup poster has a touch of an art nouveau quality to it. The vivid colours, the natural scenery and the stylised smoke, dust and vapour coming off the car. Its a wonderful image of an old automobile racing through the Long Island countryside.
The Vanderbilt Races were founded in 1904 by William Kissam Vanderbilt. By 1904 car racing was already well established in Europe. Vanderbilt offered a large cash prize to encourage American car manufacturers to take part.
The first Vanderbilt Cup races were held over a 30 mile course of winding dirt roads through Nassau County. It drew large crowds. The race was won by George Heath a native Long Islander. However, he was racing for the French Panhard auto manufacturer so it wasn’t seen as an American victory.
A French vehicle, a Darracq, took the cup the following two years. Tragedy struck in 1906 when a spectator, Curt Gruner was killed. It was the second death in two years, with injury to many others. The need to eliminate racing on residential streets was highlighted.
Vanderbilt responded, spending the next 18 months privately building the first roadway designed for automobile use only and the first concrete auto highway in the world. It was nine miles long and was known as the Long Island Parkway or Vanderbilt Parkway. Along with other improvements to solve the safety issues of previous races, the 1908 race could proceed.
In France, the first Grand Prix motor racing event had been run on June 26, 1906, under the auspices of the Automobile Club de France in Le Mans. By 1908 the French Grand Prix, held at Dieppe was run under new rulings. There was no fuel consumption limit, but the cars had a minimum weight of 1100kg, and a ma cylinder bore of 155mm.
The changes set in place discouraged American manufacturers from entering the French Grand Prix. And the large European auto-manufacturers boycotted the American Vanderbilt Cup.
It didn’t stop the race going ahead. It featured seventeen vehicles, six of which were non-American makes. After a thrilling race and a fast-flying duel between drivers George Robertson in the Old 16 and Herb Lyttle in his Isotta. The final 18 miles were a demoniac drive with all caution flung aside, but man and car survived in triumph. The Cup, at long last, was America’s, and a new record of 64.3 mph for 258 miles was set.
The poster features a painting by the artist Jean Paleologue (PAL) of the driver George Heath and mechanician Glenn Ethridge in the No 7 Panhard motor car. The winning car and driver of the 1904 Vanderbilt Cup Race. As you can see the vintage Vanderbilt car racing poster looks pretty bloody amazing. There is only thought to be one surviving original copy of this stunning poster.
Our posters are carefully and professionally created from vintage originals. Whilst great care is taken in the production of these posters, we also try to maintain a vintage feel, so there may be small imperfections, fold marks, scuffs, tears or marks that were part of the original poster master. If these do appear they should be visible on the larger views of the item on this listing. The originals of many of the posters we offer can cost many thousands of pounds, so whilst these posters look great, especially framed and mounted on a wall, they are intended as a fun, affordable reproductions and not intended fine art prints.
