The Blackiston

Story thanks to Hemmings Auto Blogs - Is this an old school John Hennessey ;) Sorry, his viper might be cool but I think the mans an idiot.

Anybody who’s lazily flipped through the Standard Catalog has surely stopped and ogled the entry for the 1912 Blackiston, from Canton, Ohio. This was a behemoth of a car, described both as a runabout and as appearing “as big as a locomotive.” G.P. Blackiston apparently built it himself, using the chassis from an unidentified racing car. What engine he fitted into that chassis remains a mystery, other than its rating of 90hp, but it had to have been massive to warrant two radiators and a hood that measured seven-and-a-half feet long and five-and-a-half feet high. Blackiston said he expected the car to be able to reach 137 MPH (at a time when the world’s absolute land speed record stood at 125.94 MPH), and told The Automobile Journal that he intended neither to race or enter production with his car, just “to find enjoyment in making long-distance tours therein.”

Which is good. Because with the one car he built, he killed a woman.


Tracking down information on the Blackiston reads more like a true crime story than an auto legend. George P. Blackiston (his last name was often misspelled Blackistone) was apparently born in Maryland in 1879, and married Florence M. Day, with whom he had two children, William George Blackiston and Elizabeth Blackiston, born in 1906 and 1908, respectively. By the time of Elizabeth’s birth, he was the president of the Board of Directors and general manager of the Pittsburgh Automatic Vise and Tool Co. in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

By late 1910, Blackiston appeared to have made a name for himself as a great advertiser and promoter. Bankers Magazine wrote of him:

To-day Mr. Blackiston stands as a sort of consulting specialist in the advertising field and has controlled the publicity campaigns of some of the largest firms in the country.

Another source of the day reported his nickname as “Live Wire.”

That resume then landed Blackiston a much-heralded position as advertising manager at the Berger Manufacturing Company in Canton, Ohio, a company that “covers the entire field of sheet metal products from the sheet to the finished article.” The position must’ve afforded him plenty of spare time and pocket change, enough to put together his massive car.

We next see Mr. Blackiston appear in the automotive trade journals in late 1912 at the wheel of his runabout. The Automobile Journal wrote that

As the hood towers above the driver’s head, the only direct view to the front is at one side of the car, but the ingenious placing of mirrors is expected to overcome this difficulty.

Not so much. On March 31, 1913, while driving his car through the streets of Canton, he struck and killed Mrs. Edith Huth, 18, recently married and at that moment boarding a streetcar. Charged with manslaughter, Blackiston also faced a civil suit from Edith’s husband, Edward S. Huth, who alleged in the suit that Blackiston

was driving the automobile at a dangerous speed, of from 20 to 30 miles an hour; that the machine had a hood 5 feet 7 inches high; that it was driven on the left side of the road, and that no warning was given Mrs. Huth of its approach.

Newspaper reports of the day indicate that Blackiston settled the civil suit for $5,000, a fifth of the damages that Edward Huth claimed, and that he pled guilty to the manslaughter charge that fall, but received a suspended sentence, thanks to Huth’s request for leniency.

Interestingly, Huth may very well be the same Edward Huth who, according to a 1914 issue of The Horseless Age, formed the Stark Automobile Company (Stark County, Ohio, includes the city of Canton) to distribute and sell the Allen automobile.

A one-paragraph report in the January 7, 1915, issue of Printer’s Ink, an advertising journal, noted that Berger replaced Blackiston with another advertising manager. Blackiston’s wife apparently divorced him and remarried not long after; Blackiston himself reappeared in February 1919 as the head of the advertising department of the American Rubber & Tire Co. in Akron, Ohio. The car remains unaccounted for.