By Harold Osmer

Imagine being an 1880s-era farmer drilling an irrigation well and coming up with oil. This temporary disappointment took a turn for the better when oil and related petroleum products became mainstream by 1904 when the Gilmore Oil Company launched.

Earl Bell Gilmore was son to dairy farmer Arthur Fremont Gilmore and brought his fresh ideas to the family operation. Stanford-educated Earl took the helm in 1918 with his father’s passing and moved the company beyond simple road asphalt toward development of refined petroleum products. His primary marketing strategy touted a consistent product and high performance proven through direct sponsorship of motorsports.

Aviator Roscoe Turner, a 1991 inductee, established multiple speed records with Gilmore the Flying Lion as his co-pilot while the Gilmore Oil Company’s Lion Head Oil and Red Lion Gasoline along with Gilmore Red Lion batteries, solvents, and car care products appeared up and down the West Coast. The Gilmore name also figured prominently above the banner at Legion Ascot Speedway just east of Los Angeles, where the first Gilmore-sponsored race cars appeared. 

Gilmore backed efforts at the Indianapolis 500 beginning in 1932. Kelly Petillo provided the breakthrough victory in 1935 aboard the “Gilmore Speedway Special,” the first Offenhauser-powered car to win the 500. Nineteen-ninety-one inductee Wilbur Shaw brought the “Shaw-Gilmore Special” to victory in 1937 for the first of his three wins. 

Twenty-twenty-one inductee John Cobb’s “Railton Red Lion” set a new World Land Speed Record of 369.7 mph at Bonneville in 1939, a record unbroken for eight years. Gilmore also sponsored 2023 inductee Ab Jenkins in his Bonneville speed and endurance exploits in the following years. 

This same period saw midget auto racing come into being and Earl Gilmore built the first venue specially constructed for this new sport, 18,000-seat Gilmore Stadium. It hosted midget auto racing from 1934 through 1950 in an era when Hall of Famers Rex Mays, Mauri Rose, Sam Hanks and Bill Vukovich ruled on tracks large and small. USAC’s enduring Turkey Night Midget Grand Prix began as Gilmore Stadium’s season-closing race and endures as the West Coast’s longest running racing event.

It was during an early midget race when Gilmore came up with perhaps his greatest idea. Gilmore felt the smoky, unreliable powerplants used in most midgets were unsuited to the professionalism Gilmore Stadium required. Earl called upon Fred Offenhauser and Leo Goossen to create a reliable, small, fast engine. The “Offy” was born, and the rest became history.

Earl B. Gilmore established the standard for modern motorsports sponsorship and promotion. Gilmore-sponsored vehicles covered the gamut from Muroc, Daytona Beach and Bonneville speed and endurance trials to aviation, midgets, powerboats and the Indianapolis 500. His backing brought Offenhauser engines into being, with their success continuing via Meyer-Drake into the 1970s! His efforts have been recognized, both during his life and after, with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Edenburn Trophy in 1941 and posthumous induction into the IMS, National Midget Racing and National Sprint Car halls of fame.  

You’d be hard-pressed to find any person in the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America who did not benefit in some way large or small by the foresight of Earl B. Gilmore. 

Harold Osmer’s award-winning book Where They Raced TURN3 provides a detailed look into Southern California auto racing venue history, where more auto racing has taken place than any other place in the world. Visit www.HOPublishing.com

Raoul Balcaen III

(Brian Cleary/bcpix.com)