Century-old ‘Green Dragon’ race car provides unique driving experience
Ever wonder what driving an earthquake would be like? I found out on a drive earlier this year in Traverse City, Mich.
Known as “The Green Dragon,” this 1917 Peerless race car, owned by Hagerty Insurance, is more often than not piloted by vice-president of public relations, Jonathan Klinger. Klinger has extensive experience miling this beast all over the U.S. and Canada for speed/distance rallies. One of these spanned from Florida to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
This was a race car in its past, but it was born as a street car. The Green Dragon is a speedster body draped over a bog-stock Peerless passenger car drivetrain and mechanicals. This car raced in period but competition history is flaky and hard to track down. It wasn’t a première league racer, more of a weekend warrior, like a spec Mazda Miata today.
All of this did little to quell my worry as I stood before the beast waiting to (literally) climb in. Starting this Dragon isn’t nearly as hard as you might think. There is a crank to start it if you wish to be manly and lose your thumb, but I didn’t, so the electric starter did nicely. After the big engine has kicked over, your hand moves quickly to adjust the advance and retard of the spark. And then it fires up.
With no mufflers, it sounds more like a taxiing aircraft than an automobile at idle. That’s because The Green Dragon has a thumping V-8 that shakes the earth like some kind of Victorian factory operating at full capacity.
When the Peerless was first constructed in 1917, V-8 engines were very rare and most makers went with in-line six or in-line eight configurations. It displaces 5.4 litres and made 80 horsepower when it was stock. Klinger reckons that with the open exhaust and a few other modifications, this one makes around 100 hp and musclecar levels of torque. It’s hardly a high-revving engine and 2,400 rpm sounds like Armageddon.
The controls are daunting. The steering wheel looks like it should open a hatch in a submarine and the gearshift is a solid, unforgiving bar of tube stock. It rattles and clanks ominously as you shove it from one gear to the next. The clutch is understandably heavy and the steering is by far the heaviest I’ve ever experienced in any car.
It’s very intimidating, but after a little while it all starts to fall together. The non-synchro three-speed gearbox rewards patience. Clutch out, hold the shifter lightly against the gate of the gear you want to enter and wait for the detent to release and slide the lever in. There’s also no tachometer, but you can simply listen to the considerable engine noise to guide you in your shifts.
There’s a childlike joy that accompanies driving the Peerless, in much the same way I imagine driving a fire truck would. The Dragon makes you feel more like a pilot than a driver, its blatting exhaust calling back to dogfights of the First World War. Ironically, the Peerless is slow. It cruises comfortably at 90 km/h, but 110 km/h is as fast as you dare take this beast. Any faster and the car would be shaking badly and the engine’s century-old components would be spinning dangerously fast.
In period, racers would do nearly 150 km/h on wooden-board tracks — and those cars would have only rear mechanical brakes. Thankfully, this one has been retrofitted with modern front discs, hidden behind actual pizza pans to look like drums. These prewar race cars come from an age when cars were in their infancy and people would gather from far away to watch race cars rip through their streets.
Today, The Green Dragon still draws a crowd and inspires that same wonder in the miracle of the automobile that first captivated the public a century ago.