How Tony Hulman brought rundown IMS track back to life
This story was originally published in 2019. We are republishing it as part of our coverage of the 2024 Indy 500.
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In the fall of 1945 when Grace Smith Hulman was asked by her 44-year-old son Tony what she thought of his Indianapolis Motor Speedway purchase for $750,000, she said: “Tear it down and start all over.” She was looking at a weed patch and an assortment of dilapidated grandstands that had been idle since 1941 because of World War II. Unattended for four years, the stands were showing the effects of Hoosier winters. Weeds were growing between the bricks on the race track. The site looked like a ghost town that even the ghosts wouldn’t inhabit.
Eddie Rickenbacker, the former race driver and World War I flying ace, was a minority partner with a group of Detroit bankers who owned the Speedway. Rickenbacker was interested in getting away from the facility.
Rickenbacker conceded the demands of running Eastern Airlines took him away from the track which needed fulltime attention. Rickenbacker expressed his confidence in Hulman, “It is fitting that Hoosier management and Hoosier capital should continue the most famous venture in mechanical competition.”
Wilbur Shaw, the charismatic threetime Indy winner, saw a successful future here for auto racing but he needed an angel. Homer Cochran, a local investment broker, nailed down the deal. He got Rickenbacker and Hulman together and the deal was struck in November 1945 at the Indianapolis Athletic Club.
Hulman was a Terre Haute businessman whose business empire of Hulman & Co included its signature product, Clabber Girl baking powder and numerous real estate holdings. Hulman put together his team of Leonard Marshall, Joseph R. Cloutier and Joseph L. Quinn Jr., and away they went racing with Shaw as president and general manager, Marshall as secretary, Cloutier as treasurer and Quinn as safety director. Track veteran, T.E. “Pop” Myers served as vice president and Hulman was chairman of the board.
Hulman wasn’t performing as an investor. He already had made his fortune. He wanted enough income each year to maintain and improve the facility.
Hulman promised renewal of the track for the 1945 race. “Our first aim will be to look at spectator comfort and convenience
Tony Hulman Jr, of Terre Haute, Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker and three time Indianapolis 500 winner Wilbur Shaw sign the formal papers of transfer for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Nov. 15, 1945. Hulman purchased the track for $750,000. and provide a track and competition that should be an invitation challenge to the greatest race drivers in the world. We think the fans in Indiana will be glad to know that the Speedway is home-owned now.”
Shaw was killed Oct. 30, 1954, in a small crash near Bluffton, Ind. Hulman died Oct. 27, 1977, at the age of 76.
In 2019, seventy-four years later the Indianapolis Motor Speedway would be sold again, this time to Roger Penske, owner of Team Penske, which fields teams in IndyCar and NASCAR and with 19 victories at the famed oval, he is the winningest owner in Indianapolis 500 history.
Sources: The Indianapolis Star:75 years of the Indianapolis 500, George Moore, William Eggert, Jep Cadou Jr., published 1986 and The Indianapolis Star files