Harry Stutz was hired by the founders of Empire Motor Car Company (Carl Fisher, James Allison, Arthur Newby, and Robert Hassler) to take over the management of Empire Motor Car Company. Fisher, Allison, and Newby entrusted Hassler to manage the company and had not provided much oversight. When in 1911, they took the time to review the books, the condition of the company was much worse than they had anticipated. They hired Stutz as the chief designer and factory manager. Stutz, the former chief engineer and designer for Marion Motor Car Company, had established Stutz Auto Parts to sell the transaxle he had developed.
What they apparently did not know was that Stutz was designing his own car. With just five weeks before Memorial Day, he designed a car that ran in the 1911 Indianapolis 500. The racer had a four-cylinder T-head Wisconsin engine with 389.9 cubic inches of displacement and a transmission with three forward speeds and one reverse.
The Stutz racer was the first car to get some practice laps in on the track. Stutz was very enthusiastic about the racer. “This is the first Stutz car I have ever built, but I believe I will be justified in making more, since this one has shown up so well.” He hired Gil Andersen, who had been employed as a driver on the Marion team, as the driver for the new car. Rumors surfaced that the car was a Marion. Stutz said, “Probably this report gained credence through the fact I was an engineer for the Marion company for four years and took charge of the Marion racing team.” Prior to leaving Marion Motor, Stutz had designed two racers for the 1911 Indianapolis 500. Stutz denied the car was a Marion saying that it “is entirely different in every detail of construction.”
The Stutz racer, nicknamed Bear Cat, didn’t suffer any mechanical issues during the race. Starting from the 10th position, Gil Andersen drove the Stutz racer the full 500 miles without a relief driver to finish 11th. His average speed was 68.25 mph even with eleven tire changes. This led to the Stutz brand becoming known as “the car that made good in a day.”
Based upon the success of the Stutz racer in the Indianapolis 500, Harry Stutz and Henry Campbell decided to manufacture the car on a wide scale and incorporated the Ideal Motor Car Company. The company leased offices in a three-story building on Capitol Avenue and 10th Street built by Carl Fisher. The financial backing for the company was provided by local as well as Eastern capitalists. Initially, the factory, which was tooled to build 500 cars per year, manufactured three different models: a two-passenger roadster, a four-passenger toy Tonneau, and a four door four passenger car. Production began in August. By September, the Ideal Motor Car Company announced the first shipments of the Stutz automobile.
The Stutz Bearcat was identical to the racer with the addition of headlights and fenders. It also had two tufted bucket seats and a small oval windshield known as a monocle. It was powered by a Wisconsin Motor 390-cubic-inch 60-horsepower straight-four engine. In 1914, it was priced at $2,000 (equivalent to $60,837 in 2023), almost four times the cost of a Ford Model T. The car could reach a top speed of 80 mph.
Harry Stutz believed success on the racetrack would lead to sales of the automobile and improving the product. For the 1912 racing season, Harry Stutz established the “White Squadron.” They would arrive at a racing event with three gleaming white cars with red wheels. Each driver had matching white driving suits with STUTZ printed in red on their chests. The “White Squadron” had some of the best drivers of the era including Earl Cooper, Gil Andersen, Barney Oldfield, and Howdy Wilcox.
Between 1911 and 1915, the racing team won 25 of the 30 races in which they were entered. While they never won the Indianapolis 500, between 1911 and 1915, they had two third place finishes (1913 and 1915), two fourth places (1912 and 1915), and one fifth place (1914). In 1915, Erwin “Cannon Ball” Baker drove a Stutz from Los Angeles to New York City in 11 days, seven hours, and 15 minutes. These feats had the desired impact upon sales. In this four-year period, the Stutz Motor Car Company sold over 3,000 automobiles.
In 1915, needing capital to support increasing sales levels, the company was taken public. New York financier Alan Ryan purchased controlling interest in the company. Harry Stutz left the company in 1919 to form HCS. Allan Ryan would become famous in the annals of business history by cornering the Stutz stock in 1920.