Selling the Speedway

This chapter details how Detroit auto executive and World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and perhaps saved it from demolition in 1927 but then doubled down on pop-culture spectacle. Around this time, too, Hollywood films about the speedway started to become common, and sociologists, including the authors of the famous Middletown studies (based on Muncie, Indiana), showed how important automobility was becoming within American life. Indianapolis was seemingly becoming a central place within North America, and an airport was almost built at the speedway in the mid-1920s.