Automobile polo or auto polo was a motorsport invented in the United States with rules and equipment similar to equestrian polo but using automobiles instead of horses. A driver would be accompanied by a mallet man that held on to the side of the car and would attempt to hit a regulation-sized basketball toward the goal of the opposing team, the cars reaching a top speed of 40 miles per hour and while making hairpin turns.
The sport was popular at fairs, exhibitions and sports venues across the United States and several areas in Europe from 1911 until the late 1920s; it was, however, dangerous and carried the risk of injury and death to the participants and spectators, and expensive damage to vehicles.
The official inventor of auto polo is purported to be Ralph "Pappy" Hankinson, a Ford automobile dealer from Topeka who devised the sport as a publicity stunt in 1911 to sell Model T cars. The reported "first" game of auto polo occurred in an alfalfa field in Wichita on July 20, 1912, using four cars and eight players (dubbed the "Red Devils" and the "Gray Ghosts") and was witnessed by 5,000 people. ~ Wikipedia
Title: Auto polo
Creator(s): Bain News Service, publisher
Date Created/Published: [between ca. 1910 and ca. 1915]
Library of Congress: LC-DIG-ggbain-11114 and LC-DIG-ggbain-11113