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30 MAY 1911 · THE FIRST 500
The car: Mishawaka built automobiles for fifteen years, and its machines ran in the first Indianapolis 500. Two cars of the American Simplex — built here by the Simplex Motor Car Company, whose cars later took the name Amplex — started the inaugural race on 30 May 1911. Car No. 12, driven by Harry Knight with John Glover Jones riding as mechanic, finished eighth. Car No. 44 wrecked, and its riding mechanic, Sam Dickson, was killed — the first fatality in the history of the Indianapolis 500, in a car built in Mishawaka. The Automobiles section works the marque whole — the Simplex of 1906–1915, the Gillette of 1916, the Kenworthy of 1920 — and prints the disambiguation this entry repeats because the name invites the error: Ralph DePalma's famous "Simplex" was the New York company's car, a different firm; the Mishawaka company's own racing record is the 1911 season, and it is dark enough at its true size. The build's companion finding stands in the ledger below: the often-heard statement that Mishawaka never built cars is the false one.
Sources: the Automobiles section of this history — the Simplex Motor Car Company and the American Simplex/Amplex (1906–1915); the 1911 Indianapolis 500 entries (No. 12, eighth; No. 44, the wreck) and Sam Dickson's death as the race's first fatality; the New York Simplex disambiguation; the Racing section — the marque's 1911 season and the mechanic-naming conflict flagged there for assembly.