Auto Polo

These are fun shots, and the LoC flick photo stream is a real treasure.

With respect to these, if you look carefully at the photo you can see that it's a staged shot. On the right car there's a visible strut on the driver side that looks like its propping up the rear axle. On the left hand car the it looks like they doctored the photo under the lifted tire. Also the people have motion blur but the cars are very clearly focused.

Given the state of the art in photography at the time action shots weren't really possible, so maybe they really were playing auto polo like complete lunatics, but this photo isn't really a way to know.

Hey, the NYT wrote an article in 1912 on the sport, which mentions the lunacy levels:

http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9B05E4DB1E3AE633A2575BC0A9649D946396D6CF

Cool.

It's staged, but cute.

Maybe the game would have worked with motorcycles.