Fuel-eFFicient Fun! The Mobil Economy Run

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The Mobil Economy RunIt was an oh-so-Detroit scene that April 9, 1967.

As hundreds of spectators and news media looked on, 41 cars motored past the official finish line in front of Cobo Hall.

The vehicles, all American-made models, were completing the wildly popular, annual contest known as the Mobil Economy Run. Winners would be declared in seven different classes as soon as official experts made their measurements. But these drivers and cars would not win for best racing times. They were vying for best gas mileage rates.

Fuel-eFFicient Fun!

By Sheryl James


sePtemBer/octoBer 2012 | 29

Within a short time, it was determined that the 1967 Mobil Economy Run winners included three Plymouths—the Valiant, Barracuda, and

Belvedere II—in, respectively, the Compact Six-Cylinder, Compact Eight-Cylinder, and Intermediate Eight-Cylinder classes. These models averaged between 20.0111 and 24.5722 miles per gallon of gas.

The other classes were won by such models as the Buick LeSabre, Chrysler 300 (the original version), and the Chevrolet Impala SS. Lowest mileage went to the

Oldsmobile Toronado, at 16.4821 miles per gallon. But cut this boat some slack; it was in the Luxury Cars class.

The 41 contenders had begun this test five days earlier, April 4, in Los Angeles. They had driven 2,886 miles over all kinds of country and city routes, over mountains and plains. They had made overnight stops in Stateline, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; Denver, Colorado; Omaha, Nebraska; and Chicago, Illinois. Each day’s route was kept secret until the driving began—usually in the wee hours of the morning.

The competitors in the 1967 Run made a fuel stop in Craig, Colorado and were saluted by a high school marching band. Courtesy of the Museum of Northwest Colorado.


Needless to say, Plymouth folks were giddy over the results as they spoke to the Detroit Free Press. “We’re very proud to win four out of seven,” said a “jubilant” Robert Anderson, Chrysler Corporation vice president and general manager of the Chrysler-Plymouth Division, though he was misinformed on the total Plymouth wins.

Standing at the finish line, Anderson continued, “It’s a tribute to the versatility of our engineers. I don’t remember a time when one car performed as well as the Plymouth did on the stock car racing circuit last year and then came back and performed so well in the economy run.”

Today, most people equate great car races with the Indianapolis 500 or the Grand Prix circuit. But those with long memories will recall that the Mobil Economy Runs were equally well-known. Also often called the Mobilgas Economy Runs, these races occurred from 1936 through 1968, with the exception of the war and post-war years 1942 through 1949. Sponsored by Mobil Gas and sanctioned by the United States Auto Club (USAC), the events involved not race cars, but new-model passenger vehicles driven on designated cross-country routes over several days. The cars, drivers, and routes were strictly supervised so the “winners” could honestly claim that they achieved the best gas mileage.

The Economy Runs all began in Los Angeles, but the end points varied. On three occasions, they concluded in Detroit: in 1962, 1963, and 1967. Exactly why the Motor City, which

produced most of the vehicles that competed, was not the destination point more often is a mystery.

As auto aficionados know, racing and automobiles have always gone hand in hand. Henry Ford drove his own vehicle in Detroit’s first auto race in 1901, mainly to earn money to start his third business—the Ford Motor Company. But the Mobil Economy Runs chronicled a different kind of race, and a lot of American historical trends as well.

It all began when a prototype run was launched in 1936 by the Gilmore Oil Company of California, which merged with Mobil Oil in 1946. Mobil took over formal

Top: All drivers followed the same route and were given their maps on a day-by-day basis. Above: Arthur Hesskamp, Carl Diehl, Bob Knoll, and Robert Cahill were Chrysler engineers who participated in the Runs. Both images courtesy of Bob Knoll.


sponsorship of the event in 1950. The first Runs were two days long, from Los Angeles to the Grand Canyon, but eventually were expanded to six-day events that ran from the West Coast to points at or near the East Coast. In 1956, the United States Auto Club began to sanction and supervise the events; this relationship lasted until the Economy Runs ceased in 1968.

According to a report by John Heitmann, a professor of history at the University of Dayton (Ohio), records showed that, through 1967, 815 cars drove a total of 1,504,117.8 miles and averaged 21.5019 miles per gallon.

Calling the Mobil Economy Runs “the largest single public relations effort of any corporation during the immediate post-WWII era,” Heitmann noted that despite the passage of time and considerable manufacturing differences, gas mileage rivaled that of today. For instance, a 1936 four-cylinder Willys achieved 33.21 mpg; a six-cylinder 1961 Ford Falcon reached 32.68 mpg; and even a 12-cylinder 1938 Lincoln Zephyr got 23.47 mpg. But why, we might ask in 2012, were people obsessed with gas mileage in an era awash in cheap gas and a consumer base that seemed unlikely to care much about miles per gallon? Heitmann suggested that, “apparently, until collective memories of the Great Depression faded, Americans continued to place a high value on thrift.”

Strict rules governed the Mobil Economy Runs from the outset. All competitive cars had to be bought at dealerships by USAC representatives. Detroit was central in this; one 1960 Detroit News article details that nine of about 50 passenger cars competing in the Run that year “were secretly selected last week from Detroit assembly lines and

warehouse stocks.” The cars were

checked to be sure they were standard, not enhanced for better performance. After being approved, the hood and chassis of each was sealed. The cars then were shipped to the location of the Run’s starting point.

Occupants of each vehicle included a driver, a relief driver, and a USAC official observer. According to his 2006 New York Times article, Bob Knoll, then an engineer for Chrysler’s road test department, drove a Plymouth Valiant in the 1964 Mobil Economy Run, along with John Galicki, who worked at the Chrysler Proving Grounds.

Each car’s trunk held a special

tank filled with gas that had been measured. The drivers were allowed 2,500 “break-in” miles. This enabled them to get to know the cars prior to the competition. But they were accompanied during this period as well as during the official Run. The USAC observer could penalize for any deviation off course, traffic violations, speeding, rolling stops—you name it. “It was like driving with a very attentive mother-in-law in the back seat, an eagle eye on

Ads like this, for a 1952 Mercury, made a point of trumpeting the model’s award-winning performance in the Mobil Economy Run. Courtesy of Time magazine.


the speedometer,” Knoll wrote. During the actual Run,

drivers would be penalized for arriving late to checkpoints. This meant they had to spend time idling after the morning start, putting them behind the other cars.

Over time, the Runs reflected American life as it changed through and beyond World War II, into the Space Age and social upheaval of the late 1960s. For example, though the first automatic transmission cars ran in 1953, such a transmission was required in all competing cars after 1955, except in compacts in 1961 and 1962, according to Mobil records.

The first women drivers competed—and won—in 1957. By 1960, 20 of 56 drivers were women, according to the April 18, 1960 issue of Time magazine: “Among them were a grandmother, seven housewives, a bobbysoxer, a women’s club president, a would-be astronaut and a café singer.” Women took first place twice and second place once.

Time’s write-up further documents the era’s attitude on women and the battle between the sexes. “To salve male souls, the female showing was not entirely based on driving skills. Explains blonde Mary Davis, 31, Hollywood restaurant owner and one of the class winners: ‘We women did damned well in the mouth department—and we didn’t do too badly in the driving either.’ At the stops along the course, the women indeed did a good job of talking their male competitors into states of nervous exhaustion. Said Mary Davis: ‘Anyone who’s on the road for hours at a time like this is inclined to be tense and irritable anyhow. All we women did was say things like, “Gee, Woody, you don’t look well,” and help the men get more irritated faster. I saw one guy break down and start bawling like a baby after the first day, when he found out

we were leading him.’”Time went on to describe that to the “tall, slim Mary

Hauser, a Hollywood housewife who knows little about the innards of the automobile (‘I don’t even know where the oil stick is’) the economy run seems relatively simple.” Hauser, who won one of the classes, told Time, “I think male drivers are high-strung, tense, too worried about stepping on the accelerator without thinking. Me, I just sit there calmly, smoking a cigarette, [and] steering with [the other] hand.”

In the early 1950s, students at the California Institute

Above: Shirley Shahan, a drag racer by profession, proved she could drive economically in the 1967 Run. Courtesy of the National Hot Rod Association. Facing page: Mobil stations distributed brochures to motor-ists, driving home the lessons to be learned from the Runs. Courtesy of the Old Car Manual Project.


of Technology (Caltech) were recruited to be “deputized official” observers during the Runs. According to a 1951 article from the school’s publication, Engineering and Science magazine, they were “responsible for the automobile’s stock status, for preventing additives or special petroleum products from being used, and for seeing that normal and legal driving techniques are used.” Caltech engineering students, the article went on to conclude, “are selected for this job because they are impartial, have a technical background, and seriously believe in the honor system.”

The 1958 Mobil Economy Run featured “the only new car on the market this year, the Edsel.” Three Edsels—two Pacers and a Citation—were entered.

In 1959, a major change was made in the calculation of mileage. Before that year, mileage was calculated using the “ton-miles-per-gallon” formula. This required judges to multiply the gross weight of each car and its passengers by the mileage traveled, then divide that sum by the number of gallons of gasoline used. Confusion and complaints encouraged Mobil to adopt an actual miles-per-gallon standard.

At the turn of the decade, teen drivers began to enter the competition. The 1964 Run featured Darla Jean Banks of California, the 1963 Miss Teenage America, and Julian (Bo) Jett of Georgia, the 1963 National Teenage Safe Driving Road-E-O winner. Both young people said they

hoped their participation would “show that teenagers can be the best drivers on the road.” That Banks’ mother was accompanying her might have enhanced this outcome.

By the 1967 contest that ended in Detroit, a new era had begun. Rambler Americans had traditionally done well in the Mobil Economy Runs, being the original, U.S.-made compact car. But, as the Detroit Free Press reported that year, “The Rambler American’s surprising fifth-place finish among compact six-cylinder cars was attributed by James Moore, an American Motors engineering executive, to the requirement that all cars be equipped with exhaust emission control devices.”

Finally, it is worth noting that the last Run, in 1968, originally intended to end in New York, had to be halted at Indianapolis due to “racial violence along the planned route,” according to a Wall Street Journal report. Presumably, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4 and the National Day of Mourning planned for April 7 factored into this decision.

The scene in Detroit in 1967 was typical of the attention the Run received in towns all along its routes. Knoll recalled how the contest “captured the public’s imagination, with spectators sometimes lining the test route for a glimpse of the cars… . In those days, the Mobil Economy Run received a lot of national publicity, but even so it was strange to see spectators lining the road in small towns. Our arrival in Phoenix, the first big city, seemed like a holiday

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parade: flags were flying, bands were playing and crowds were waving. I soon got used to this reaction, and it gave me a sense that I was doing something special.”

The 1962 and 1963 contests ended in Detroit. As the Detroit Free Press reported from the checkpoint in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1962, “it seems appropriate that after three days and 1,227.6 miles of the Mobile Economy Run, six out of seven Detroit area drivers were ‘in the money.’” Ten Michigan drivers and co-drivers were aboard 46 cars; six of the vehicles were sponsored by Detroit-area dealers and dealer associations.

Chief among the drivers was Les Viland, an engineer for American Motors Corporation and a resident of Livonia. Viland competed and placed in or won many Economy Run contests.

The Free Press reported on April 5 that “the 1962 run will go into history Thursday night at a dinner in the Sheraton-Cadillac Hotel,” and also that “Detroiters may see the finish of the…Run Thursday when the 45 cars will come into town on the John C. Lodge Expressway, turn east on Larned to Washington Blvd., and cross the finish line in front of Cobo Hall.”

The 1963 Run consisted of 36 entries following the same route to Cobo Hall, and also featured Viland finishing first in his class in his Rambler American 6.

Other Michigan drivers included Joe Sturm of Ann Arbor, an engineer at the Chrysler Proving Grounds in Chelsea; Bill McNulty, another Chelsea engineer; Bill Horton of Milford, a Chevrolet test driver; and Leon Funderburk of Highland Park.

Lest anyone sound too naïve about the contests and the auto companies, a 1968 Wall Street Journal article made the point that “The Economy Run…is supposed to identify the U.S. made autos that get the best gas mileage. But it also gets Mobil Oil Corp. and Detroit’s automakers another kind of mileage—an almost endless stream of pictures and news stories that recount the details of the contest… . During this year’s Economy Run, Mobil was host to 50 auto writers… . Mobil estimates some $7 million will be spent by automakers advertising this year’s outcome.”

Though one Chrysler official told the Journal in 1968 there was no real way to prove if good results in Economy Runs translated into higher car sales, “a win is great for dealers who can tell customers, ‘This is the car that won the Mobile Economy Run.’”

After 1968, no dealer could make such claims. In a press statement, Mobil announced it was discontinuing the Run due to “changes in emphasis on automotive performance factors, in the attitudes of motorists, and in Mobil’s advertising strategy.” The changes in America, evidenced by the assassination of King and Robert Kennedy, not to mention the escalation of the Vietnam War, surely rendered the Mobil Economy Run superfluous. An era, quite clearly, had ended.

Sheryl James is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who lives in Brighton. She wishes to extend special thanks to the staff supervising the National Automotive History Collection, Detroit Public Library Skillman Branch and to the Society of Automotive Historians for materials provided for this article.

Above: Rambler Americans, which were built with an eye toward economy, were the runaway winners of the fuel contest. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Facing page: Each class winner received a certificate of recognition. Courtesy of Bob Knoll.


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Fuel-eFFicient Fun! The Mobil Economy Run