Stutz Bearcat History

The Bearcat grew directly out of Stutz's competition debut: a car built in under five weeks finished 11th in the 1911 Indianapolis 500, earning Stutz the slogan 'The Car That Made Good in a Day.' Ideal Motor Car Company turned that racer into a road model — essentially the race car with fenders and lamps — introduced as the Bearcat in the Series A of 1912.

Early Bearcats used a 390-cubic-inch (6.4 L) Wisconsin-built straight-four engine, paired with a Stutz transaxle. Stripped of weather equipment and built for speed, it became the archetypal American speedster; Stutz Bearcats reportedly won 25 of 30 races they entered in 1912. In 1914 it cost $2,000 — roughly four times the price of a Model T — and in 1915 Erwin 'Cannonball' Baker drove a Bearcat from Los Angeles to New York in just over eleven days, setting a cross-country record.

The original speedster Bearcat ran through 1922, by which point the name had dropped off Stutz's model lists; it was then revived for 1931 on the twin-cam DV-32 chassis — a very different, more powerful car guaranteed by the factory to exceed 100 mph. The DV-32 Bearcat lasted through 1933, and Stutz car production ended entirely in 1934 as the Depression and looming bankruptcy closed the original company. The 1912–1934 span shown here brackets both the early speedster (1912–1922) and the DV-32 revival (1931–1933).