MILE A MINUTE DOWN HILL.

The New York Times
December 5, 1909

Thousands See Coastmobile Races on Cold Spring Road.

Special to The New York Times.

HUNTINGTON, L. I., Dec. 4.—Thousands turned out this afternoon to see the exciting races of the coastmobiles, and none went home disappointed, for the boys had the rides of their lives.  Their machines went nearly a mile a minute, and some are said to have exceeded that rate upon the steepest part of Cold Spring Hill.  The business in the village was practically suspended for nearly two hours while the forty-one entrants raced.  The course was gay with the colors waved by young girls who had turned out to see their favorites win, and the cheering as the cars passed was heard for considerable distances.

Three classes were arranged.  The first class was for coastmobiles having bicycle tires.  The second was for those equipped with solid rubber tires, and the third for plain iron tired vehicles.

The entrants, who got up not only their cars, but themselves to resemble the Vanderbilt Cup racers as closely as possible, were rigged with goggles.  They had gay silk banners tied to their backs, and these streamed behind in the wind as their cars sped down the hill.  As for the cars themselves, they were grotesquely ingenious in their get-up.  Some carried extra wheels; one had an inverted powder can upon the rear in imitation of a gasoline tank.  But John Leach won the applause of the crowd by having a cat and several kittens in a cage upon his car, which was labeled "Tiger."

John Stockbower won the prize in the first class; Roy Green took the prize in the second class; John F. Wood, Jr., captured the third class.  Silver cups for the best-equipped cars were won by William Marsh, Ralph Ireland, and Richard Cortwright, in the three classes.