Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1471275
I n 1919 and 1920, the small town of Marion, Indiana, hosted one of the biggest races of the era. The Marion 200-Mile Interna- tional Road Race brought out all the factory teams, and several teams made "Marion-specials" –racing motorcycles designed specifically to perform well on the five-mile course. The event was heralded with the most grandiose advertisements of the day, and while the Marion 200—or the Cornfield Classic as the press of the day dubbed the race—was one of the biggest races of its era, the event ultimately proved to be short-lived. The reasons for its demise became obvious, as we'll see, but for a pair of Labor Day weekends, Marion basked in the glory of national attention from its international race. The battle of the "Big Three" was in full bloom during this period after the end of World War I. Harley-Davidson, Excelsior and Indian were vying for the attention of potential motorcycle buyers, as America was enter- ing one of its most prosperous eras. While people had money to spend, motorcycles had already become somewhat of an enthusi- ast item other than a cheap form of transportation, which is what they had been considered just a decade before. What once was a low-dollar alternative to expensive automobiles had been turned into what many deemed an impracti- cal form of transportation after Henry Ford ramped up produc- tion of the Model T, which made cars affordable to the general public for the first time. Success on the racetrack became even more important for manufacturers to rise above the fray since mo- torcycles were now more luxury than necessity. The Marion race was promoted by local Marion businessmen led by a Harley-Davidson distributer named Glenn Scott. Scott's part- ners in the venture were bankers, politicians, and the head of the chamber of commerce. The track was a five-mile circuit southwest of town that reportedly cost $75,000 (nearly a million dollars in today's money). The road-race course was basically a pair of two-mile straightaways connect- ed by shorter half-mile straights— it was a giant rectangle; that's what they called a road-race course back then. The four turns were 90-degrees and slightly CN III ARCHIVES P122 THE CORNFIELD CLASSIC BY LARRY LAWRENCE