Return to Glory by Matthew DeBord

Author:Matthew DeBord
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2017-06-01T18:40:23+00:00

Chapter 6

No Tougher Test

It’s not easy for anyone living in the early twenty-first century to understand what speed meant to someone living in the early twentieth. Just two decades before the running of the first 24 Hours of Le Mans, “speed” meant a particularly fast horse or a ship that could go perhaps 17 knots (about 20 miles per hour). The first automobiles were clattering, modified equestrian coaches with small motors. They were faster than walking, and faster than bicycles. But to the modern eye, they were alarmingly slow.

The fastest machines of the day were trains and, as the new century progressed, airplanes. A train powered by steam wouldn’t hit 100 miles per hour until 1934, a mark set by the legendary Flying Scotsman, known for its runs from London to Edinburgh. Airplanes in the early twentieth century were also crossing the once-mythic 100-mph barrier: the Sopwith Camel biplane, which achieved fame in the skies over England and France during World War I, had a top speed of 113 miles per hour.

Of course, all this relative speed for citizens of the pre– and post–WWI era was a revelation. It did more than improve their lives and add danger, romance, and glamour to the most exciting products of the technological revolution—it redefined consciousness by altering humanity’s relationship with time. What once took weeks, it was apparent, could now take days, or hours. High-speed transatlantic crossings were in the cards; after World War I, Nazi Germany would build huge zeppelin airships that could beat a luxury liner from Europe to America. Faraway cities and towns were now much more accessible. And it wasn’t necessary to feed, groom, and attend to the flesh-and-blood health issues of an automobile. A car required a mechanic, not a veterinarian, and if you blew a tire, you didn’t have to consider shooting your car to put it out of its misery. It might have been a less noble form of transportation, but it redefined life.

Almost as soon as cars arrived on the scene, people started to race them, as Henry Ford had in that Michigan race designed to drum up funding for the future Ford Motor Company. By the 1920s, it was abundantly evident that fast cars made for a thrilling spectacle, and a culture of racing grew up around them. But these cars were often purpose-built for the track or the racecourse, or at least seriously modified, as were the road cars Enzo Ferrari built for well-heeled enthusiasts of his true passion, racing.

Le Mans represented a different challenge: to build fast cars that could go the distance. Speed and reliability mattered. A race car could impress for the distance and time span of a grand prix race, but how about a car that could handle an entire day of uninterrupted punishment? That, it was reasoned, would be a car worth owning—and the automakers that gave society those cars would be worth buying from.

The first 24 Hours of Le Mans—known in France as the 24 ­Heures du Mans—was held in 1923, in the very early days of motor racing.

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