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Motor Boys. The Motor Boys were created by "Clarence Young," a Stratemeyer Syndicate house name used in this case by Edward Stratemeyer (Baseball Joe, Hardy Boys, Minute Boys, Dave Porter, Rover Boys, Russell Brothers, Ted Scott, Speedwell Boys, X Bar X Boys), and appeared in the twenty-two book "Motor Boys” series, beginning with The Motor Boys, or, Chums Through Thick and Thin (1906) and concluding with The Motor Boys on Thunder Mountain, or, the Treasure Chest of Blue Rock (1924).

Ned Slade, Bob Baker, and Jerry Hopkins, the three Motor Boys, use cars, motor boats, submarines, and planes to have adventures on land, sea and air in the years before, during, and after World War One. The trio are friends from childhood. They grew up in the village of Cresville, "not a great many miles from Boston." Ned is the only son of Aaron Slade, who owns the largest department store in town. Bob is the son of Andrew Baker, one of the wealthiest men in Cresville. And Jerry is the son of the wealthy widow Hopkins. Together this trio of "great chums" has a wide range of adventures. They drive into Mexico and discover the underground ruins of a lost city of Aztecs buried centuries ago in an earthquake. They use high-speed motor boats to explore the Everglades of Florida and discover a Lost Race, the survivors of an old Seminole culture. They fight on the front lines as soldiers during the War. They win money in motorcycle races, they discover a lost gold mine and used it to fund themselves. They find Lost Lake and help a hermit living there; they catch the criminals who seek to wreck a steamship, to their own financial advantage; they find a gold-rich derelict; they befriend an inventor, invest in his flying machine, and win an air race with it; and they find a fortune in radium in the Grand Canyon.

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