‘Whistling Billy’ was one of the fastest cars of any means of propulsion in American dirt track racing in the early 20th century. Originally known as the ‘White Rocket’, it was renamed ‘Whistling Billy’ by delighted spectators because of the howling noise that came from its burners as it sped down the straights.
The car was built in 1905 by the White Sewing Machine Company, specifically for racing. It was originally powered by a compound White steam car engine with conventional and rather old-fashioned slide valves operated by Stephenson’s link motion. But it was soon modified with more efficient piston valves on the high-pressure cylinder. This was highly successful and was adopted by White for all their touring steam cars from 1907. Steam pressure was 800psi – twice that of White’s touring cars – and the steam was superheated to 400 degrees Celsius, which made the steam pipes red hot.
In 1905 the car broke the world track record for the mile on a dirt round track with a time of 48.45 seconds – but, soon after, the driver Webb Jay crashed it and was badly injured. The company thus decided that racing was too dangerous and relegated the car to a mere exhibit in its Chicago branch.
In 1907, Charlie Bair, a wealthy sheep farmer, persuaded White to rebuild Whistling Billy and sell it to him in a $20,000 deal – eight times the cost of an average steam touring car at the time. Bair was highly successful, winning the Kansas Post Chase in 1907 and breaking the five-mile world track record at the same event in 1908 and earning $50,000 in prize money.
In 1908, during a race at Ascot Park in Los Angeles, a front tyre blew out on a curve and the car flipped over three times in the air and landed in the middle of the track where it was almost destroyed by fire. Bair, undaunted, rebuilt it in 1909 with a new 18hp double piston-valve engine with Joy valve gear and made the car 18 inches shorter and 400lbs lighter, but almost certainly used many original parts. The new ‘Whistling Billy’ made a successful tour across the USA’s west coast and won all its 29 races that year.
In 1912, during a practice run in Portland, Oregon, the car crashed over an embankment and was found upside down, broken in half. It ended up on a farm, with the engine being put into a boat.
In 2004, the current owner Bob Dyke began the long journey to rebuild it from many original parts found in America when he was looking for another White steam car. He combined these with parts from a 1907 White that featured many technical modifications originally pioneered by ‘Whistling Billy’. After an eight-year rebuild it made its competition debut at the Chateau Impney Hill Climb, following Dyke’s campaign to overturn a 100-year-old ruling which banned steam cars from competing in motorsport events against petrol-powered cars. After years of letter-writing and lobbying, the ban was finally lifted in September 2015.
Image displayed with the kind permission of the Haynes Motor Museum.
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