On July 25 1903, a ten horsepower Franklin automobile driven by John Wilkinson of Syracuse won a five mile race on the track of the Empire City Trotting Club in Yonkers in 6 minutes and 54.6 seconds. The next year in 1904, a ten horsepower, four-cylinder Franklin car with an air cooled engine from Syracuse driven by engineers/test drivers L.L. Whitman and C.S. Carris, crossed the country from San Francisco to New York City in a record 32 days, 17 hours, and 21 minutes, much of it over road-less desert and prairies.