Harry Miller (auto racing)

Harry Arminius Miller (December 9, 1875 – May 3, 1943) was an influential and famous American race car builder, most active in the 1920s and 1930s. In the opinion of noted American racing historian Griffith Borgeson, Miller was "the greatest creative figure in the history of the American racing car".

1924 Miller 122/183 "Convertible" (designed to be converted quickly from one engine to another) ran at 151.26 mph, at Muroc Dry Lake, California

1925 Miller 122 Indianapolis 500 front wheel drive racer

1925 Miller 122 Indianapolis 500 racer

Biography

Cars built by Miller won the Indianapolis 500 nine times; three more instances were won by his engines running in other chassis. Miller cars accounted for no less than 83% of the Indy 500 fields between 1923 and 1928.

If Offenhauser engines, a re-badged Miller derivative, and the dominant engine at the Indy 500 and on the Champ car circuit in the 1950s and 1960s (although it kept winning until the 1970s) are added, the number of wins at Indianapolis alone increases by 28, with over 200 more elsewhere. It was not until 1981 that an Indy 500 start did not feature a single Miller-derived engine.

Miller's start in the automotive business began with the short lived Yale Automobile Company. From Yale, he moved to Lansing, Michigan to work for motoring pioneer, Ransom E. Olds. While at Oldsmobile, he worked as a mechanic for the racing crew during the early Vanderbilt cup races. After a dismal 1906 race season, Harry headed west to Los Angeles, California to open a small machine shop specializing in the production of carburetors.

Miller's involvement with the racing side of his carburetor business led to repairing and later building race cars. After repairing the 1913 Peugeot Grand Prix car which was the state of the art at the time, Miller and his employees, Leo Goosen and Fred Offenhauser designed the Miller racing engine from the Peugeot 4 cylinder, double overhead camshaft, 4 valves per cylinder layout. This began a thoroughbred line of race motors that dominated American racing well into the 1970s.

Between the 1920's and late 1930's, Miller engines were used in speed boats. These speed boats powered by Miller engines had several victories during this time period.

Miller went bankrupt in 1933. His shop foreman and chief machinist Fred Offenhauser purchased the shop and continued development of the engine as the Offenhauser or "Offy" engine until the start of World War 2. Fred retired from the business in 1946, selling out to two of his racing friends: three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Louis Meyer and Meyer's one-time riding mechanic and highly skilled engine builder Dale Drake.

After his bankruptcy Miller jointed forces with long-time Indianapolis 500 enthusiast Preston Tucker. The two began building race cars together and in 1935 formed "Miller and Tucker, Inc." The company's first job was building 10 souped-up Ford V-8 racers for Henry Ford. The time to develop and test the cars was insufficient, however, and the steering boxes on all entrants overheated and locked up because they were placed too close to the exhaust. This caused them to drop out of the race. However, the design was later perfected by privateers, with examples running at Indy through 1948.

Miller and Tucker, Inc. moved to Indianapolis and continued race car development and construction. In the late 1930's Miller and Tucker also developed the Tucker Combat Car and attempted to sell it to the Dutch and US governments unsuccessfully. The combat car could to 115mph on pavement and 65mph on rough terrain, and had a power operated gun turret among other innovative features. The US government did buy the Tucker Gun Turret from the car and it was used on nearly every major military vehicle including the B-17 and B-29 Bombers, PT boats, and landing craft.

Harry Miller took some of the design elements from the Tucker Combat Car to American Bantam, notably the suspension, where he was involved with the development of the first Jeep.

Tucker and Miller continued to work together off and on until Miller's death in 1943. Tucker was close with Miller and even helped his widow pay for Miller's funeral costs. While working with Miller, Tucker met chief mechanic John Eddie Offutt, who would later help Tucker develop and build the first prototype of the Tucker '48.

Meyer and Drake Engineering, with Leo Goosen as chief engineer, continued to develop the Offy throughout the 40s, 50s, and into the 60s; often filling the engine bays of all 33 Indy 500 starters with Offy engines or their close cousins the V8 Novis.

After Lou Meyer sold out of Meyer and Drake in the 1960s to form his own company to sell Ford double overhead-cam V8 racing engines in competition with the Offy, Dale Drake and Leo Goosen persevered and reorganized Meyer and Drake as Drake Engineering. After enduring three years of Ford DOHC dominance at Indy, Drake's company prevailed in 1968 with the first turbocharged engine to win at Indianapolis behind Bobby Unser.

Descendants of the Offys (and thus the Millers) in the form of the turbocharged Drake-Goosen-Sparks (DGS) and Drake-Offy engines battled against descendants of the Ford DOHC until the Cosworth DFV and DFX engines originally developed as Formula 1 engines by Mike Costin and Keith Duckworth finally became too powerful at reduced manifold pressure (turbo boost) limits mandated by the race sanctioning body for the Offys to overcome. The last Offy to finish a race at Indianapolis powered Gary Bettenhausen from a starting position of 32nd to a 3rd place finish in 1980.

Awards

• He was named to the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1990.
• He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1999.
• He was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 2003.

Further reading

• Mark L. Dees, The Miller Dynasty: A Technical History of the Work of Harry A. Miller, His Associates, and His Successors (Barnes, Scarsdale, 1981; second edition Hippodrome, Moorpark, 1994) This is the definitive work on Miller, but was published in limited editions, and may be hard to find
• Griffith Borgeson, Miller (Motorbooks International, Osceola, 1993)
• Griffith Borgeson, The Last Great Miller: The Four-Wheel-Drive Indy Car (SAE, Warrendale, 2000). This car was built with sponsorship from the Four Wheel Drive Company of Clintonville, Wisconsin.
• Griffith Borgeson, The Golden Age of the American Racing Car (Bonanza, New York, 1966; second edition SAE, Warrendale, 1998)
• Gordon Eliot White, "The Marvelous Mechanical Designs of Harry A. Miller" (Iconografix, Hudson, Wisconsin, 2004).

External links

• Miller History
• 1932 Miller FWD
• Harry Miller - Automotive Genius

Persondata
Name	Miller, Henry Arminius
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	December 9, 1875
Place of birth	Menomonie, Wisconsin
Date of death	May 3, 1943
Place of death