Education
After graduating from the Armour Institute of Technology in Chicago, he sailed on Great Lakes freighters out of Duluth.
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Arthur Garfield Wood
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Career
He spent his early years in Osakis, Duluth, and St. Paul, Minn. , which inspired his later interest in speedboat racing.
He was generally known as "Gar" or "Commodore. "
The lift raised the front end of the truck so that the load could slide out the rear.
He later added steel dump truck bodies to his line of products.
World War I led to enormous demand for his product.
Anticipating a slack demand following the war, Wood bought a competitor, Horizontal Hydraulic Hoist Company of Milwaukee, Wis. , to obtain its markets and a number of useful patents.
In 1931, Wood repurchased his hydraulic hoist patent.
Sold for $5, 000, it cost him $750, 000 to buy back.
In 1933, his corporation was renamed Gar Wood Industries, Inc.
He patented a device to prevent airplane accidents caused by clogged gasoline lines or fuel-pump failures.
He also invented a pilotless speedboat that was used as a moving target by Navy gunners.
In the early 1930's Wood designed a powerful high-speed launch for the Navy and spoke with President Franklin D. Roosevelt about its possible combat use.
He developed a hull strong enough to withstand the installation of these motors and the high speeds.
Following the war, he built small boats for the Navy and manufactured hydraulic hoists and heating equipment.
From that base, he traveled about the continent in a twin-engine seaplane, working on countless mechanical projects.
Thanks to his fortune, he was able to devote much of his life to his passion for speedboats, spending enormous sums of money on sleek, powerful crafts.
He estimated that by 1936, he had spent more than $1 million on his "hobby. "
This operation, incorporated as Gar Wood, Inc. , was separate from his other business.
The company built speedboats of all sizes, from sixteen-foot runabouts to forty-foot cruisers.
In 1937, the boat-building company was absorbed by Gar Wood Industries for $65, 000.
Wood was known as the "Gray Fox of Algonac, " earning the nickname from his appearance (tall, gaunt, and wiry, with white hair) and from the town in Michigan where his power boats were built.
In 1920, he set a world record speed mark of seventy miles per hour, and continued to hold the record at ever-increasing speeds until 1946.
Wood drove in each of those years except 1931, when he was disqualified from the race for passing the starting line too soon.
He retired from competitive racing in 1933, though he never gave up his love of powerboating.
Always eager to prove the speed and worth of his boats, he would arrange singular challenges.
He held the international motorboat racing record from 1932 to 1937.
In 1949 he unveiled the Venturi, which he said was the product of twenty-eight years of planning.
It was a flat-bottom, twin-hulled ship that used the principle of the catamaran for stability.
After being successfully tested in all types of weather, the ship ended up in a storm off the Florida coast in 1954.
Wood and eight other persons were rescued from a life raft by a Coast Guard helicopter.
The Venturi was said to have cost $600, 000 to develop.
At the time of his death, Wood was survived by his son, Gar Wood, Jr.
A commemorative speedboat race, the Gar Wood Trophy Race, was inaugurated on the Detroit River in his honor in 1974.
An obituary is in the New York Times, June 20, 1971. ]
Politics
Following the war, General Douglas MacArthur praised the small boats and said that two hundred of them in the West Pacific might have turned the scales at the outset of the war.
Connections
However, that race was won by one of his powerboats that was driven by his brother George.
