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VOL. 51 ISSUE 22 JUNE 3, 2014 P117 ship and became a dealer for three years. Weishaar didn't have racing out of his system, though, and he returned to the circuit in 1919. The biggest win of Weishaar's career came in the Marion (Indiana) Cornfield Classic Road Race in 1920. This was during the height of the battle of the Big Three – Harley-Davidson, Indian and Excelsior. Marion was one of the biggest races of the era and all the factory teams brought their top riders and actually built "Marion Specials", bikes designed specifically to run top speeds on Marion's two-mile long straights. In 1919 Harley's Red Parkhurst won the 200-miler in three hours and six minutes, averaging almost 67 miles per hour in front of a crowd of 12,000 spec- tators. The race was a coup for Harley-Davidson, which swept the top three positions with Ralph Hep- burn and Otto Walker taking second and third. Un- fortunately for Weishaar, he'd dropped out early in that year's race. It was important for Harley to defend its Marion title, but it was equally as big for Indian and Excel- sior to knock H-D off its Marion pedestal. Weishaar came through for Harley and won the 1920 race over Indian's Leonard Buckner. To illustrate how quickly motorcycle technology was advancing at the time, Weishaar chopped nearly 20-minutes off of Parkhurst's winning time from the year before. Advertisements featuring Weishaar and his Marion victory flooded the motorcycling journals of the day and made Weishaar perhaps the best-known racer of the early 1920s. Weishaar was known as a careful rider and one who suffered a lot of tough luck. He led many Na- tionals only to have his machines fail him. In 1922 in Wichita, Weishaar led 80 laps of the 200-Mile Na- tional Championship only to have a rear axle break. He'd actually retired from racing for a second time when in 1923 Weishaar signed a contract to race at the newly built Legion Ascot Speedway (not the same Ascot Speedway that was famous for holding AMA Nationals later in the century) and moved to Los Angeles. On April 13, 1924, Weishaar took part in a five-mile "Sweepstakes" race at Ascot. In the crash that proved fatal to Weishaar, he was battling Gene Walker for the lead. Johnny Seymour drafted past both Walker and Weishaar. Following the others Weishaar didn't see a hole in the track and hit it sending Weishaar's Harley into a high-speed wobble. The bike went into a skid and he fought to save it before hitting the outside fence. Weishaar went through the wooden fence and was still conscious and not thought to be seriously hurt. His wife, Emma, drove him to Los Angeles General Hospital where he died just hours later from internal injuries. Many of the top racers of the day attended Weishaar's funeral. His close friend, Jim Davis, a rare individual who survived a brutal period of rac- ing and lived to 103, was a pallbearer along with fellow racers Fred Ludlow and Ralph Hepburn. Weishaar was laid to rest at Inglewood Park Cem- etery in California. The racing community rallied to the aid of Weishaar's surviving wife and six-month-old son and paid off the house that the Weishaars were buying. Weishaar's death, on April 13, 1924, struck a deep blow to the sport. Weishaar's passing, along with the racing death of Gene Walker two months later, prompted a movement by the manufacturers to slow down the speeds of the racing machines of the 1920s. Classes for smaller engines were implemented, but as is usually the case racing, speeds continued to climb. Weishaar's racing exploits faded into history, but historians began to uncover his influence on rac- ing some 60-years after his passing. Gradually a profile of one of the country's most beloved racers emerged and one who was ahead of his time when it came to being a showman and figuring out ways to be memorable beyond just winning races. His long- term influence on the sport was finally recognized. Some even point to Weishaar's baby pigs as the source of referring to Harley-Davidsons as 'Hogs'. Weishaar was part of the original class of inductees in the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998. CN THE SHOWMAN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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