Joe Tracy's was a name known to every schoolboy in America in the early part of the last century. His fame came from his motor racing exploits and his consistency - 'so Tracy like' - which was known to every American. Yet Joe Tracy's origins had been far removed from the glamorous world of motor racing which he was to inhabit.
Joe Tracy was born in County Waterford on March 22, 1873. With only a rudimentary education, he emigrated from Ireland to the United States at the age of 19. Understanding the value of education, he attended night classes for several years in New York and began a career in steam. Soon, Joe was running a steam-powered electric lighting plant on West Broadway, a position which required him to have a steam engineer's licence. Joe obtained the necessary licence and found that it also entitled him to drive a steam car. He acquired a steam Locomobile and having mastered its operation soon graduated to a motorcycle of his own design. By the end of 1899, he had begun to use his engineering expertise to assist the owners of new cars to operate and look after their purchases.
By 1903 Joe had become interested in racing and was a regular participant in organised races. From the beginning of his racing career Joe was a winner, taking first place in his very first event at the Empire City horse track at Yonkers - a feat he repeated there again later in the year and also at Brighton Beach. His first long distance race - the first running of the Vanderbilt Cup race - ended in retirement but it did see the beginning of his successful partnership with his riding mechanic, Al Poole.
In 1905 he was selected as part of the American team for that year's Gordon Bennett Cup race in France. Although this outing ended in a mechanical failure and early retirement, Joe went on to take 3rd place in the Vanderbilt Cup race. At the time this was the best-ever showing by an American driver in an international race and served to make his a household name across America.
In most of these events Joe had driven a Locomobile, the make to which he was contracted after 1906. Perhaps if he had driven a different make his results would have been even better, for the Locomobile was generally too big, too heavy and too unreliable. The 1906 Vanderbilt Cup race was a good case in point: throughout the race the Locomobile Joe drove suffered water leaks and overheating was only kept at bay by Al Poole supplying chewing gum to stop the leaks. Apparently, so numerous were the leaks that Al's supply had to be augmented by frequent stops to request more chewing gum from spectators along the course! During one of the practice sessions for the race - usually from dawn to 7am - Joe and Al had an unnerving experience. Following a French driver at high speed they suddenly hit a patch of dense fog. Joe didn't slow down and when they suddenly came out of the fog the Frenchman was nowhere to be seen, until, that is, the pair looked behind. Somehow, in the dense fog they had passed him at high speed on a stretch of road only 11 ft wide!
It was during the 1906 Vanderbilt Race that Joe had an incident which led to his eventual retirement. During a wild slide he hit a young boy who suffered a fractured leg. Joe visited the boy in hospital and they remained friends up to Joe's death more than 50 years later.
Thereafter, Joe faded out of racing and returned to work as a consulting engineer in the American motor industry. In the late 1930s he was a pioneer of the American old car collecting movement and remained involved with restoring early vehicles right up to his death on March 20, 1959, two days before his 86th birthday.