The French rebels that revolutionized the racing world
By Peter Brock
Paris in the early 1900s was one of the centers of the educated Western universe. Imaginative concepts and inventions of every type seemed to appear mystically almost daily from the dozens of brilliant minds that had been drawn there by the collective energy on constant display.
The complex world of engine design especially was in full flower, with technical innovations in machining and metallurgy fueling the passionate demands of visionaries in the burgeoning aircraft and automobile industries. Both of these new technical wonders, unimagined just years before, had equally captured the public’s imagination.
Aircraft designers demanded ever greater amounts of power for their wings to climb faster and higher, while automotive engine designers competed on their drawing boards and on the surrounding roads in the constant search for greater speed, durability and efficiency. In this free-wheeling competition they often borrowed ideas from each other, which continually cross-pollinated the field and resulted in constant improvements. Early accounts note that as many as 50 different engines were being developed in the Paris area alone.
Racing became the accepted method of proving superiority. As a result, the enlightened French took a keen interest in enthusiastically embracing all types of motorized technology on the ground and in the air.
The world’s first automotive magazine, L’Auto, which debuted in 1905, even outsold the regular newspapers. Roads in France were so superior to those elsewhere in Europe that point-to-point races over great distances in major city-to-city competitions often resulted in top speeds over 80 mph on sections of fairly smooth but still unpaved byways.
These events were attended by thousands who were so densely packed along these unprotected sinuous and dusty corridors that crowds often spilled out onto the center of roads for better visibility, creating serious mayhem. These dangerous conditions lasted until 1903, when the most important event of the era, the now infamous Paris-Madrid race, killed and injured so many spectators and participants that the competitors were unceremoniously blocked at the Spanish border.
With a couple of notable exceptions, the focus on automotive design and racing in America was far more practical. Since quality roads were almost nonexistent beyond city limits, competition was much different. Public enthusiasm for racing was just as great, but entrepreneurial American promoters soon realized the value of converting local horse tracks and steeply banked bicycle racing ovals into much safer venues so they could control and, most important, profit from the easily contained masses.
Within a few years, these specialized tracks developed into a number of immense, unique and beautifully constructed high-banked, wooden-surfaced super-speedways that would define America’s automotive competitions for years to come.
Jules Goux—top and above, shaking hands with riding mechanic Emil Begin and talking to fellow driver Paolo Zuccarelli—helped shape the modern racing engine. Photography Courtesy Indianapolis Motor Speedway
In Europe, though, road racing prevailed. There, the ever-improving teams from Italy, Germany, France and sometimes England continued in their fight for engineering superiority—until 1912, when the game-changing Gran Prix of France in Dieppe saw the introduction of a brilliant new challenger from Peugeot.
In America, visionary ex-barnstormer Carl Fisher built and opened the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1908, initially planning the huge 2.5-mile oval as a test facility for America’s burgeoning Midwestern automotive industry. With growing public interest in automobile racing, Fisher soon realized the potential for the sport and began promoting the idea of a special yearly event. That competition would soon become America’s most respected, with the world’s highest speeds and largest purse for the winner.
America’s top car constructors, like brothers Fred and August Duesenberg, Louis Chevrolet (Frontenac), Mercer, Stutz and Marmon, all used racing to publicize their latest designs, often contracting or selling to famed drivers like Barney Oldfield, Pete DePaolo and “Terrible Teddy” Tetzlaff to prove their worth.
In France prior to 1911, the cars of wealthy enthusiast and patron of the sport Ernst Ballot had reigned supreme against Italy, Germany and the U.K.’s finest.
However, deep within the massive Peugeot organization, a new theory of lighter, higher-rpm engines was developing that would soon change the entire world of engine design. This radical and highly unconventional concept had not yet fully emerged because it didn’t originate “upstairs” in the formal confines of Peugeot’s engineering office. Instead, it was born far below on the gritty garage floor, where three young test-driver mechanics had begun questioning their futures with the company’s current offerings.
At the time, Peugeot only raced its production cars in the smaller, less publicized Voiturette class using a single-cylinder, production-based engine. However, Peugeot’s top three racers, all just 27 years of age—Jules Goux, Paolo Zuccarelli and Georges Boillot (not to be confused with well-known French engine and car manufacturer Ernst Ballot)—had greater aspirations for themselves and for Peugeot.
The trio dreamed of competing in Europe’s premier events against the continent’s most sophisticated competition with a much larger-engined car of their own design. Multi-cylinder, aircraft engine-derived Fiats and Benz racers, some as large as 20 liters, were Europe’s serious Grand Prix contenders against the French Ballots and Delages that reigned locally at the time. Even though Peugeot had gained early fame as a producer of bicycles and the world’s fastest motorcycles, its automotive division had not yet built a serious large-displacement racing car capable of running in Europe’s major events. But all that was about to change.
In 1911, when news reached Europe that Ray Harroun and his Marmon had collected the incredible sum of $14,000 by winning Carl Fisher’s first Indy 500, the European engineering community took serious notice. While making plans for an even more spectacular 500 in 1913, Fisher sent his personal emissary to Europe to find and entice the continents’ best to challenge America’s fastest in what had become the world’s richest race. In Paris, teams from Peugeot and Ballot were receptive to Fisher’s financial incentives and immediately made plans to construct new racers for the 500.
Advanced metallurgy was in its infancy, so large-displacement, slow-revving engines were in vogue. Their heavier rotating masses couldn’t endure the strain of high rpm, so the only contemporary solution seemed to be ever larger and unfortunately heavier engines, which in turn required even bigger and heavier chassis that demanded great strength to drive.
In theory, a higher, lighter-rpm solution seemed obvious to most in the local engineering community, but without the materials or a suitable design, all except the three young visionaries at Peugeot were still struggling with the realities of physics. This highly talented trio was convinced its combined abilities and ideas could deliver a superior design capable of competing successfully against the large-displacement, aero-engine Italian and German racers of the time.
All they needed was a trained draftsman to transcribe their combined visions onto vellum. They found their fourth team member in Ernest Henry, a quiet Swiss freelancing draftsman who had been attracted by the potential of the swirling Parisian engineering community. Each of these four men had an interesting background that enabled them, in cooperation, to eventually prove their controversial concept.
Initially, Jules Goux, whose family had worked for Peugeot almost since its inception, held a key position within the team. Even though Goux was a graduate of Paris’s famed School of Arts and Merite, he was also one of that era’s special class of driver-engineers who were expected to know as much about working on and repairing the automobiles they were driving (as were their riding mechanics, who risked their lives to race with them).