1964 Tour de France

[Frogelan]

I have just come across a period You Tube of this event and was interested by the footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_FepMlUv0c

It briefly shows the S1 of Pierre Gelé and Franck Lamarque at 23:15, 31:17, 39:37 and 40:07. He came 11th in the GT class I believe.

Pierre Gelé was a keen racer and also entered the 1964 Le Mans 24H race. Unfortunately, the car entered by Royal Elysées (the garage in Paris) completed just 7 laps....

Hope you enjoy it.

[gordy7]

That's brilliant. Now hatching a plan to take a road trip and follow the tour route and try and drive as much of the circuits as you can nowadays.

[Frogelan]

That sounds like a fun thing to do.

If you are interested in interesting roads in France (perhaps this is a topic I should write up with nmauduit) I can give you some ideas from the Rallye Monte Carlo Historique.

Andrew

[Elanintheforest]

Here's a write-up from the time which I found a while ago to put on my Lotus Cortina website.

You can now see the different venues and join the dots for a complete map!

Mark

[Frogelan]

Thanks for that Mark.

There is quite a lot of documentary evidence around and this fills in some gaps.

The aspect that I enjoyed from the video was the mixing of small cars with the larger ones (it is a Standard Triumph film so obviously Slotemaker's Spitfire has a lead rôle).

Having (historic) raced and rallied in France in a 1963 MGB and a 1965 Mini Cooper S, I know many of these locations (especially the Monte routes).

Andrew

[elansprint71]

Great footage- thanks for posting!

[Slowtus]

Lived in Europe - as distinct from the UL, as it was then - and spent a few years in Belgium, courtesy of the RAF and tended to wander all around simply because we could, albeit on the thinnest of shoestrings, think shoethread.

One time we did the drive from Belgium to the Cote d'Azur (St Maxime) where we impoverishly tented, drank cheap wine and ate dry baguettes for breakfast and gained 2nd degree suntans.

Yes we went to St Tropez but Ms Bardot was not at home so we settled instead for a ridiculously expensive meal instead. Shark, Champagne and other stuff, pretty much blew the budget right here!

On the way back up to Belgium, having chosen the path less travelled and in our new Innocenti 1300 export I remember remarking to glowing wife (see suntan above) that these climbs were quite the thing.

I had to shift up/down on occasion to maintain a decent tire squealing speed and as we did so we noted various places of interest on the way back as we travelled; bit of a diary thing going on. Also available on converted Super8 cine film if I ever get round to doing the converting, but I digress.

A couple of weeks later, back in Belgium, we were watching the Tour De France, the bicycle one and I swear that these supermen were ascending thes same roads the car had huffed and puffed a little on with relative ease.

[Brad B]

I enjoyed this film very much. Thank you Andrew for the link. I search YouTube all the time, but would never have entered the right search terms to find this. If anyone has more links to Elan’s in period endurance racing and rallies I’m very interested. I recall on a different thread an Elan did very well on one Tour d’Corse, driven by Bernard Consten. To bad a video wasn’t produced for that event.
I’m not likely to drive my Elan in France, but have enjoyed my 58 Giulietta Sprint on French roads. All contributions on historic routes are fun reading as well.

[Frogelan]

Thank you Brad. I'll certainly post what I stumble across.

From what I can see from these events, many interesting cars no longer appear in historic events and the events themselves have evolved. A quick read of the article found by Mark confirms this.

As for interesting roads in Europe...it would be a full time occupation to tackle this!

[Old English White]

I enjoyed this film very much. Thank you Andrew for the link. I search YouTube all the time, but would never have entered the right search terms to find this. If anyone has more links to Elan’s in period endurance racing and rallies I’m very interested. I recall on a different thread an Elan did very well on one Tour d’Corse, driven by Bernard Consten. To bad a video wasn’t produced for that event.
I’m not likely to drive my Elan in France, but have enjoyed my 58 Giulietta Sprint on French roads. All contributions on historic routes are fun reading as well.

Brad,
The Elan you mentioned driven by Bernard Consten in Corsica is the red one this time driven by René Richard - Bernard Lagier (DNF suspension)... at the 1964 Tour de France Automobile!
I did some research on the subject and found this by looking at the license plates ... (both having # 8760PF75).
Speaking of beautiful roads, I took a road trip from Seattle to SF, following the historical 101 and more, this in 16 days. To manage some work at the wheel, I had rented a triple black MY2013 Mustang 5.0 ...

We get wonderfull memories...
Christian.