Two cars at the first Indianapolis 500, and the Speedway's first death

30 May 1911 · Indianapolis Motor Speedway

The entries: The first Indianapolis 500, run on 30 May 1911, carried forty starters, and two of them were Mishawaka cars, entered under the American Simplex name with Amplex chassis and engines. Car number 12 was driven by W. H. Turner, with Walter Jones as riding mechanic: a four-cylinder Amplex of 443 cubic inches — a larger engine than the road cars' — and it finished eighth, completing all two hundred laps, thirty-three minutes and forty-eight seconds behind the winner. Car number 44 was driven by Arthur Greiner, with Sam Dickson as riding mechanic. The History Museum's local account remembers only the second car — "one of the Amplex cars took part in the first Indianapolis 500-mile race" — and names number 44; the race record holds both, and both stand here.

The crash, in its two tellings: The race record and Sieber's marque history agree on the outcome and differ on the lap. The 500's record puts the crash on lap 12; Sieber's account puts it on the thirteenth lap. Both are printed; the record reached does not settle between them. On the facts there is no disagreement: the number 44 car wrecked early in the race, Greiner escaped with a broken arm, and his riding mechanic, Sam Dickson, was thrown from the car and killed — the first fatality in the history of the Indianapolis 500. The History Museum's telling adds the mechanism: the car lost a tire mid-race, the wheel rim struck the bricks, the car somersaulted, came to rest standing vertical on its radiator, and toppled over, crushing Dickson. Sieber adds the car's reputation and the substitution that put Greiner in it: number 44 had already wrecked in practice — "the hoo-doo car," he calls it — and its designated driver, Walter Jones, was kept from driving it, his mother having had him, in Sieber's word, "kidnapped"; Jones rode instead as Turner's mechanic in the number 12 car, and the substitute Greiner took the 44.

The disambiguation that matters: The famous Simplex of the first 500 is not Mishawaka's. Ralph DePalma finished sixth in a Simplex — the New York Simplex Automobile Company's car, a different machine from a different company, the very firm whose name had forced the Amplex renaming the year before. Any account that gives "Simplex" a single entry in the 1911 race has merged two companies. Mishawaka's cars ran as American Simplex entries with Amplex power, finished eighth and wrecked early, and the marque's place in the race's history is fixed by the second of those facts as much as the first: the first man killed in the Indianapolis 500 died riding in a car built in Mishawaka.

Sources:

1. The 1911 Indianapolis 500 race record (Wikipedia, "1911 Indianapolis 500," and the Speedway record it carries), read first-hand — car 12, W. H. Turner and Walter Jones, entrant American Simplex, Amplex chassis and engine, four cylinders, 443 cu in, eighth place, 200 laps, +33:48; car 44, Arthur Greiner and Sam Dickson, the lap-12 crash, Dickson killed; Ralph DePalma's sixth-place Simplex identified as the New York company's car.
2. Ronald L. Sieber, the Simplex marque history, read first-hand — the crash placed on the thirteenth lap; the number 44 car wrecked in practice and its "hoo-doo" reputation; Walter Jones kept from driving and riding instead in the number 12 car; Greiner the substitute.
3. The History Museum (South Bend), "American Simplex Company-Mishawaka," read first-hand — the number 44 car, Greiner and Dickson, and the lost-tire, rim-on-bricks, somersault telling of the wreck.