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The French city of Le Mans' history as an important racing
venue stretches back 100 years to the first French Grand
Prix, won in 1906 by the Hungarian-born Ferenc Szisz driving
a Renault. It was also at Le Mans where Jimmy Murphy
took the checkered flag for Duesenberg in the 1920 French
GP. And since 1923 Le Mans has guaranteed itself a place
as the most important of endurance races with the inaugural
vingt-quarte heures contest. That race was won by a
Chenard et Walcker, an example of which is displayed at the
Musée de la Sarthe, alongside a representative of the 1924
winner, a three-liter Bentley.
For Bentley, winning four more of the 'round the clock
grinds by 1930, and particularly the Le Mans race, would
add considerable luster to the marque's fame and reputation.
Today a soaring, ultra-modern building, hard by the legendary
Le Mans circuit, houses over 125 cars with the
emphasis, naturally, on those that have run in the grueling
enduro, along with a wide and fascinating array of mostly
French motorcars from the late 19th century onwards.
Le Mans' own Bollée family and their pre-1900 engineering
accomplishments get a fair share of display space.
The earliest car in the collection is an 1885 de Dion-Bouton
et Trepardoux dog-cart with its steam engine fueled by coal.
A road-going locomotive of the time.
French automotive innovation is evident everywhere you
turn in the museum. The huge 1908 Kreiger nine-passenger
electric, the aerodynamic 1935 Voisin, a 1938 Panhard et
Levassor sleeve valve six-cylinder luxury sedan with central
driving position, the wraparound windshield on the wild
1914 Saiga with only two rear doors and quad headlamps,
and the diminutive 1100 cc lightweight 1925 Chenard et
Walcker "Tank" racecar looking like a kissing cousin to the
Bugatti "Tank" of the same decade — all speak to the
"French way" of designing and building automobiles.
After Bentley's domination of the races in the 1920s, it
was Alfa Romeo's turn, winning four straight contests from
1931 through 1934. There was no race in 1936 but in 1935
it became England's turn again with a Lagonda victory followed
in 1937 and '39 with Bugatti and a Delahaye win in
1938. The start of World War Two put an end to activities at
the Sarthe in 1940. Today, examples of the Lagonda and
Alfas can be seen on the museum's floor.
A section is devoted to showing the automotive creations
of Jean-Albert Gregoire, the great proponent of front wheel
drive, whose accomplishments include the extraordinary
1952 Socema Gregoire with a drag coefficient of just 0.20,
the FWD Tracta sports cars of the '20s and '30s, his own
Chapron-bodied 1953 Gregoire cabriolet, plus 1930s and
'40s designs for Amilcar, Adler and Panhard.
The lineup of post-1948 race winners is impressive, leading
off with an example of the Ferrari 166MM that Luigi
Chinetti drove to victory in the first postwar 24 hour contest
in 1949. This epic drive, in which Chinetti had the wheel for
23 of 24 hours, truly put Ferrari on the international map as
a marque to be reckoned with. |
