Sports cars are often thought to have appeared in the United States after the conclusion of the Second World War. Soldiers who were exposed to British and other racing and sports cars returned stateside and created a market for American-produced vehicles that larger auto manufacturers were happy to serve
Although it is true that the sports car market really did not mature in the U.S. until the late 1940s and early 1950s, it is not entirely accurate to peg that moment in time as the birth of American sports cars. Sports cars, albeit in very limited numbers, did exist prior to the 1940s domestically. Some even predated the First World War
These often-forgotten pioneering sports cars deserve attention. Their performance was startling for the era and many of them competed and fared favorably against their better-known French and British counterparts. Here are three early American sports cars that deserve to be rescued from the dustbin of history
Stutz Motor Car Company, which produced vehicles from its plant in Wisconsin, produced an assortment of exceptional sporting cars. Stutz cars won the American Road and Track Championship in 1915 and were capable of reaching average speeds well in excess of one hundred miles per hour
The Stutz featured a 4 cylinder, 4-valve motor with a compression ratio of 5 to 1. Stutz competed admirably in races for an extended period of time, placing second in the 1919 Indianapolis 500 and winning the then-prestigious New Zealand Cup on three separate occasions during the 1920s
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