IMS Quest for Lowell Trophy

The article in the attachment below was first published in the May 8, 1910 Indianapolis Star.
 
The article concerns the efforts of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to secure the rights to hold the competition for the Lowell Cup. This event had been staged in Lowell, Massachusetts the previous two years, 1908 & 1909. The typical challenges of profitability, crowd control and collaboration with community leaders proved to be the event's undoing. Despite announcing plans to conduct the contest again in 1910 it became apparent early in the year that this would not be possible.
 
Meanwhile the ambitious team at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was ever-vigilant in their quest for opportunities to lend prestige to their facility. Offering an array of "brand equity" trophies was part of the strategy. They had "homegrown" trophies such as the Wheeler-Schebler, G&J, Remy Brassard and Prest-O-Lite in place. They had only recently attracted the Cobe Trophy out of the Chicago Motor Club. This article documents that they made a stab at the Lowell Trophy and could have rescued it from the scrap heap of history. In the end it was not to be. At the time of this article however, hopes ran high.
 
Speedway Director of Contests Ernie Moross reportedly had "written for a conference" to discuss the opportunity and was expecting a response within days. The article concludes that because the northeast already hosted other big-name road races like the Vanderbilt Cup and the Fairmount Park contest the market was crowded. That may be a little hard to believe in an age when population centers were not nearly as accessible as today or even the decades more immediately subsequent to 1910. Note that the article mentions "Chairman Heinze" (John Heinze of the Heinze Electric Company) who was the driving force in organizing the races - although he failed to stir the enthusiasm sufficient to stage it in 1910.
 
In addition to the trophies mentioned here the article underscores the excitement over the national championship status the American Automobile Association (AAA) had given to the upcoming Memorial Day weekend races. Gold medals were planned for the winners of such designated events. 
 
As an editorial note while I understand the IMS quest for prestige it does seem unlikely that a trophy named for a Massachusetts community would make a lot of sense in the context of the Brickyard. It seems quite possible Mr. Heinze and his colleagues agreed.