The winningest driver at IMS isn’t one of the four-time Indianapolis 500 winners or Jeff Gordon, who won five Brickyard 400 races. Rather, it is Johnny Aitken who amassed fifteen victories on the fabled track. Known as “Happy Johnny,” he started racing in 1905 as a member of the National ...
Carl Fisher
Brickyard Crossing
Brickyard Crossing, Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s golf course, can trace its origins to the 1920s in Miami Beach. Golf was becoming a pastime of the rich and the people who wintered in Carl Fisher’s Miami Beach resort demanded it. Interestingly, Fisher really didn’t care for golf. In fact, he was terrible ...
Carl Fisher’s Automobile Promotions
Fisher loved promoting bicycles and when he converted his bicycle shop to an automobile agency (dealership), the promotions became even more outlandish.
He reached back into his playbook and resurrected throwing a bicycle off a building in downtown Indianapolis. In the initial stunt, whomever picked up the crumpled bicycle and ...
Rosie the Elephant
In the 1920s, Carl Fisher used elephants in the development and the promotion of Miami Beach. Ed Ballard, a fellow Hoosier, gave him the first elephant as thanks for a trip to one of Fisher’s Miami Beach hotels. Ballard was the owner of six circuses including the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, one ...
Carl Fisher and his Bicycle Promotions
By all accounts, Carl Fisher was a promotional genius. Sit back and enjoy some of the tales of Carl Fisher. Some of these will probably have you scratching your head wondering if they are indeed true. Most of the stories are from secondary sources and in some cases appear to stretch ...