Harry A Miller

9/12/1875 - 3/5/1943

Record updated

Harry Arminius Miller was an influential and famous American race car builder, most active in the 1920s and 1930s.

Harry A Miller
American race car builder, most active in the 1920s and 1930s. In the opinion of noted American racing history Griffith Borgeson, Miller was the greatest creative figure in the history of the American racing car.

Cars built by Miller won the Indianapolis 500 nine times; three more instances were won by his engines running in other chassis. Miller cars accounted for no less than 83% of the Indy 500 fields between 1923 and 1928!

If Offenhauser engines, a re-badged Miller derivative, and the dominant engine at the Indy 500 and on the Champ car circuit in the 1950s and 1960s (although it kept winning until the 1970s) are added, the number of wins at Indianapolis alone increases by twenty-eight, with over two hundred more elsewhere. It was not until 1981 that an Indy 500 start did not feature a single Miller-derived engine...

Miller started off running a race car shop that built and repaired race cars. After repairing the 1913 Peugeot Grand Prix car which was the state of the art at the time, Miller and his employee Fred Offenhauser designed the similar Miller racing engine. After Miller went bankrupt, Offenhauser purchased the shop and continued development of the engine as the Offenhauser or "Offy" engine, which continued to dominate Indianapolis for decades.




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