Barney Oldfield & Tom Cooper

This image is of  Barney Oldfield and his long-time friend and business partner Tom Cooper with a pair of Ford-Cooper racers in late 1902. These were Henry Ford's famous race cars, developed in collaboration with Cooper, the national champion bicycle racer in 1899. Oldfield's car was the "999," and other models referred to with other names, such as "Red Devil" and "Arrow. It was in this racer that Oldfield burst onto the national scene when he defeated millionaire auto manufacturer Alexander Winton at Grosse Pointe, Michigan in October 1902. Winton, who had raced in the James Gordon Bennett Cup, was widely regarded as America's premier auto racer at that time.
 
One story has it that Carl Fisher gave the 999 its name when promoting a race meet, naming it after the world's fastest locomotive, New York's "999." Oldfield also used this car to record the first "mile-a-minute" lap around a mile track in June 1903.