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What: “The Pacesetter: The Untold Story of Carl G. Fisher,” by Jerry M. Fisher

Publisher: Lost Coast Press, Fort Bragg, Calif. (440 pages) $29.95

When the late Tony Hulman bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1945 and saved it from bankruptcy, he restored it to its glory as the world’s most famous motor racing track. It’s almost as if that was its beginning.

However, the track had been around for 36 years.

Jerry Fisher, whose cousin, Carl G. Fisher, was one of the founders when it was built in 1909, felt the world was too unaware of the man who established the Indianapolis 500, so he set out to write a biography of his cousin.

In researching “The Pacesetter,” the younger Fisher discovered that his cousin had also created the first transcontinental highway, developed Miami Beach and Montauk, N.Y., at the tip of Long Island and known in its heyday as the “Miami Beach of the North.”

“A year before Fisher’s death [in 1939] the Saturday Evening Post . . . lamented that ‘Who’s Who’ still did not know him, still true after nearly 60 years and more remarkable when one considers the squads of lesser lights granted inclusion in works of biography,” writes cousin Jerry.

A P.T. Barnum-type promoter, one of Fisher’s stunts was to float a hot-air balloon over Indianapolis with a Stoddard-Daytona automobile hanging from the gondola. Fisher advertised it as the first car to fly over the city.

Shortly after that, he bought 320 acres called the Old Pressly Farm for $80,000 and it became the site of the Speedway. It opened in 1909, but the racing surface of crushed stone and tar was unsuitable, prompting Fisher and his partners to repave it with bricks for an additional $200,000.

The distance of 500 miles was chosen because at that time it was about as far as they could run during daylight hours.

The building of the Speedway occupies only a small portion of the book, but interesting is the note that construction took 450 men, 300 mules, 150 road scrapers, four six-ton rollers and three 10-ton rollers. More fascinating are such tidbits as Fisher, a 35-year-old multimillionaire, spurning his longtime fiancee to marry 15-year-old Jane Watts, or his being insulted at a low government offer for a house and dock he owned and blowing them up instead of accepting the offer.

“The Pacesetter” is an interesting time piece about an ambitious Indiana car builder with remarkable vision, told by a doting relative.