The Bugatti Queen

by Miranda Seymour

  Smoothing over what sounds to have been a difficult relationship were Claire Descollas and the team’s famously charming captain, Odette Siko, another Alfa driver to have survived a serious crash when her car skidded off the Le Mans circuit in 1933. Siko had partnered Hélène in the Paris–Saint-Raphaël rally of 1934, and driven with Simone des Forest the following year in the Monte Carlo Rally. She, if anyone, must have been able to keep the peace.

  Siding with des Forest and against Hélène was César Marchand, Yacco’s highly experienced mechanic. Recalling the Yacco trials forty-two years later, Marchand still remembered the pleasure it gave him, now and again, to make a little slip while pouring oil, just enough to get a good splash of black viscous liquid onto Madame Hellé’s over-displayed legs. That, he thought, was the way to treat a woman who was always grinning at cameras, making sure she had the most prominent place in every shot.10

  It’s hard to see how any participant in such an event could have provoked such rancour, for there was nothing glamorous about the Yacco endurance trials. The four women were dressed for warmth, leather jackets tightly belted over heavy woollen checked shirts, thick shooting socks pulled up under sturdy calf-length knickerbockers. Leather wind-caps kept their hair out of their eyes; goggles and a minute strip of glass shield above the wheel would help to prevent them from being struck and possibly blinded by stones. The only safety straps in the car were those which held down the Matford’s massive bonnet; the broad leather driving seat was unsprung and hard as a box.

  Rivalry was set aside as the drivers shook hands on the morning of 7 May and posed for the press before setting out to meet and perhaps exceed Yacco’s high expectations. Odette Siko, as captain, had picked one of the trickiest driving times for herself, sunrise, when low rays dazzled along the Matford’s bonnet, making visibility a matter of guesswork; Hélène took the equally treacherous hours of twilight before handing over to the younger and less experienced des Forest. Descollas sweated out the long afternoons. Each driver was expected to stay at the wheel for three hours; the speed was never allowed to drop below 140 kph. This relentless schedule was to continue without a break except for a lightning exchange of drivers, for ten days and ten nights. Marchand’s expertise guaranteed that the Matford did not let them down; all the women had to do was drive around the high-banked Montlhéry bowl, and endure.

  The authorities have, with one exception, failed to note one singular fact about the Yacco speed trials.11 The first attempt failed. After three days, Claire Descollas pulled out and the trials were quietly called off. Yacco offered no further sweeteners, but on 19 May the team gallantly set off again in an attempt to make the ten-day record.

  Hélène had always spoken candidly to the press about her hatred of the rat-in-a-cage experience of circling speed bowls. The one dramatically angled photograph of her at the wheel of the Matford shows that she was completely at ease and in control; other Montlhéry regulars had seen her training hard at the circuit during the month leading up to the trial. Still, it was just as well that it was Simone des Forest and not she who had the terrifying experience, while doing a trial lap at 180 kph, of seeing a photographer spreadeagled on the cement, his body directly in line with her speeding car. ‘If he’d moved one inch,’ des Forest remembered later, ‘he would have been done for and so would I. I just had to hope he was too scared – and he was.’12 For a woman whose car had scythed down a huddle of bodies less than a year earlier, the experience would have been traumatic.

  By 29 May the exhausted team had notched up no fewer than twenty-six new records. It was an incredible achievement (see Appendix 2). Yacco showed their gratitude with ruby and diamond-brilliants brooches, shaped in the ‘V’ of the Matford’s great engine; Hélène made a present of hers to her last benefactor, who still wears it with pride.13 The French press hailed the women as champions; news of their success was reported in Britain and the United States but not in Italy or Germany, where foreign triumphs were of little interest. Most of the records achieved during the Yacco trials remain unbroken to this day.

  Yacco’s triumph came at a time when France was badly in need of a morale boost. Paris was playing host to the World Expo fair and looking glorious, with giant shafts of lights playing over the Eiffel Tower and transforming the Seine into a river of liquid gold. It was, however, difficult to ignore the fact that the only national pavilions to have been finished on time were produced by Germany, Soviet Russia and, with vigorous support from a communist workforce, Spain. Picasso’s passionate response to the atrocity of Guernica a month earlier drew less attention at the time than a megalithic sculpture in steel of two heroic workers holding the hammer and sickle flag high above the Soviet pavilion. ‘Hurrying to the Lubyanka’ was the disrespectful nickname given to it by cynical Parisians, but there were no jokes about a gigantic marble map of industrial Russia, marking its resource-sites with fabulous jewels. The German pavilion designed by Albert Speer offered a more chilling glimpse of the future; a tower, 170 foot high, was topped by a golden eagle with the emblem of the swastika held in its claws.

  Yacco certificate recording the ten-day trials.

  This was the symbol which presided over Paris in the summer of 1937. Hélène, looking out from the curving windows of her apartment above Rondpoint Mirabeau, could see it clearly. The bird’s brazen wings glowed in the summer light, matching the sheen of her carefully polished row of trophy cups.

  How ominous did Speer’s pavilion seem in the summer of 1937? Some, like the writer Julien Green, had been conscious for several years of what Green described as an insidious general sense of apprehension.14 Hitler, having repossessed himself of the Rhineland which flanked France’s eastern borders in 1936, was focusing his attention on Austria and the Sudetenland, the German side of Czechoslovakia. French newspapers had started to carry advertisements for gas masks; discussions were held about the best locations for air-raid shelters; warning sirens were demonstrated at the Expo’s Pavilion of Passive Defence. For most people, however, the fear of provoking Hitler was far greater than any sense of alarm at his territorial acquisitiveness. The fact that Germany was producing over 300 planes every month to France’s modest 45 was reported in the press, but no suggestion was made that France should try to compete. Hitler, it was widely believed, would leave the French in peace so long as nothing was done to attract his attention. Lying very still and very low, France might escape harm. Safety was the great thing, protection from the carnage which had destroyed a whole generation of the country’s workforce.

  A country’s fears do not show up as frightened faces. In the summer before the war, Parisians crowded into the city’s cinemas to see Disney’s Snow White and a comforting cartoon world in which the heroine’s principal virtue was her meekness; Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu drew angry catcalls for its attack on a life of lies and compromises and the film was banned as bad for French morale. Maurice Chevalier, meanwhile, drew whistles of approval for his cheerfully anodyne parody of Hitler in song at the Casino de Paris. Hitler himself could have sat in the audience and taken no offence.

  Hélène’s address book included contact numbers for the German firms of Mercedes and Auto-Union; her sympathy cards after the São Paulo accident included one from a young relation of the German First World War hero, Captain Manfred von Richthofen, resplendent in his air force uniform. She had no feelings of hostility. On the contrary, she was eager to be taken on by one of the German firms which were producing the most powerful cars in Europe. Early in the spring of 1938, she offered her services to Adler as a works driver. Conscious as always of her value as a marketing tool, she enclosed an attractive photograph with her career summary. Adler, however, expressed no interest; they would, the manager crushingly informed her, be relying on drivers who were more familiar with their cars for the challenging Liège–Rome–Liège Rally in which she had expressed a wish to drive.15

  A possible reason for Hélène’s choice of Adler, rather than a French firm, lay in a new frie
ndship.

  Post-war events in her life have caused much emphasis to be laid on the fact that Hellé Nice was, in the words of one journalist, ‘tempted’ back into rally driving in 1938 by ‘that suave womanizer and SS member [Huschke] von Hanstein’.16 In fact, she had already made several vigorous attempts to return to the racing circuit; no further temptation was required. The Hanstein connection does, however, merit consideration. He was, with the exception of Hans von Stuck*, the only German driver with whom she struck up a friendship shortly before the war.

  Huschke von Hanstein was, at twenty-seven, a dashing young man whose zest for danger was matched by a flair for publicity which later served him remarkably well as the manager of Porsche. Later photographs show him looking like a cartoon character, with a grin of tombstone teeth and outsize glasses; in 1938, however, he was wirily attractive with a string of conquests to his name. Eyebrows are sometimes raised today about the fact that his new BMW 328 Roadster had the number-plate SS-333;* in 1938 the plate would not have been regarded as particularly sinister by French drivers. Hélène’s colleague Anne Itier had already driven professionally with Hanstein in 1937 and enjoyed a whirlwind romance after he helped to rescue the car she was driving with Marguerite Mareuse from a desert storm which had submerged their car in sand during the Rallye du Maroc. Shortly after this, Itier was invited to partner Hanstein at Le Mans, where he was driving an Adler.

  By 1938, then, Hélène was aware that Adler were using French women drivers. A damaged shoulder had temporarily put Hanstein out of Grand Prix driving, but he was still participating in rallies. He asked Hélène to partner him in a German-made DKW in the Rallye de Chamonix, starting from Beaulieu. What Arnaldo Binelli thought about this is unknown, but Hélène’s own record of the race leaves much to be guessed at and little explained. They were, she wrote, penalized after arriving late because they had become lost in the mist (‘nous sommes trompés de route à cause du brouillard’). From a woman who had survived crossing Estonia in the depths of winter on roads covered in black ice, the explanation seems limp and unconvincing. Remembering the romance with Itier after her desert storm, one wonders whether Hanstein was playing a variation on a familiar theme.

  No letters exist; no allusion is made to Hélène in the memoirs written by Hanstein’s wife, although she had some acid comments to make about Itier. The only reference which has survived to connect Hanstein to Hélène Delangle is a single record, made in her own schedule notes, of the Chamonix Rally. Despite the puzzle of how they got lost on roads she knew so well, it does not add up to much; the address book which Hélène kept up to date until the war does not even mention Hanstein’s name. Perhaps, in seeking explanations for the misfortunes which overtook Hellé Nice after the war, Hanstein’s name has been given misleading prominence. No harm ever came to Anne Itier in France through her own well-known romantic connection with him, a year earlier.

  Huschke von Hanstein

  It was Itier, the following summer, who enabled her friend to prove that she had lost none of her racing skills. Itier had always been interested in promoting single-sex racing for women; pragmatically, she may have accepted that this was the only way in which women racers might hope to make their mark. In 1939, she began, through the Union Sportive Automobiliste (USA), which she helped to set up, to negotiate for a series of all-female races which would take place on the same day as a Grand Prix. Itier then approached Renault and argued that it was in their interest to sell their cars into the female market by running them in these races. The idea was not new; Hélène had competed in a similar competition for Peugeot 301s in 1933.

  Renault, who had recently produced a cost-conscious but sporty car called the Juvaquatre – the first to have a single-shell body – were enthusiastic. On 11 June, on the same day as the Picardy Grand Prix, Hélène was one of ten entrants for the morning race of ten sturdy Juvaquatre Renault saloons. It was a family car, not intended to be driven at fierce speed in bad conditions; the circuit of Péronne, north of Paris, was awash with rain that day, while a driving wind kept the spectators huddled under the limited protection offered by a modest grandstand. Hélène must have been delighted; this was her first competitive event since the accident and she was only just beaten to first place by a younger driver, Yvonne Simon, over a 68-kilometre course. The near-win was a spur: two months later, she drove south-west to Saint-Gaudens and the familiar tricks and trials of the mountain-encircled course of Comminges. She had always loved a good audience; she had her wish here, perhaps because there was some hint in the air that trouble was ahead and that the convivial, raffish noisy days of the old-fashioned French race meeting were coming to a close. For whatever reason, it was as hard to find a standing-spot with a view of the Comminges track on 6 August as to find a reader that summer who had not borrowed or bought Gone with the Wind, the summer’s international bestseller.

  ‘Le Critérium Automobile Féminine’, as it was grandly named, took place during the morning of the perfect summer day, bright, windless and warm. The spectators, ready to enjoy themselves, cheered as the best women drivers in France climbed into the neat row of unspectacular Juvaquatres and revved them in preparation for the starting signal. Simone des Forest, Madame Marinovitch and Itier herself were Hélène’s most serious challengers for the prize; in the closed cars, they were identifiable only by the numbers.

  It was her day; by the end of the first few laps, there was no doubt that she was going to be the winner. Charles Faroux, writing for L’Auto, remembered how he had admired her handling of this notoriously difficult course in earlier years. Now, he watched how boldly she handled the hardest sections, where the road twisted steeply downhill, gaining herself another five-second advantage on each lap. Her control was, he wrote, outstanding, as was her ability to keep up an average of 90 kph in a family saloon. In all, Faroux felt ready to honour Hellé Nice as the fastest and the most technically skilled woman driver of her times. Neither he nor she could have known it, but this was the glowing tribute which would crown and close her professional racing career.17

  The day was hers, but she had always looked down on all-female events as less of a challenge. There must have been a moment of wistfulness as she watched her friend Jean-Pierre Wimille, remembered now as one of the great drivers of their time, take second place in the afternoon Grand Prix at Comminges. He, more loyal to the make than she, was driving a Bugatti. They spoke to each other after the race. Wimille had just been in England with Jean Bugatti, visiting the new premises of the Bugatti Owners’ Club at Prescott, in Gloucestershire; he must have shared Jean’s dismay at the news which reached them from Paris. The bank with which the Bugatti family had always dealt had decided, after a panicky year, to extend no further credit. Bankruptcy could only be staved off by taking part of the company out of the receiver’s long grasp. With Jean’s agreement, Ettore Bugatti went to Belgium to arrange with his friend King Leopold for the setting-up of a new factory at Antwerp.

  Hearing the gossip at Comminges, Hélène hugged Wimille, bringing a smile to his austere features, as she wished him good luck for his next race, on the sand track of La Baule. It is unlikely that she or even Wimille himself knew how closely Jean Bugatti had involved himself in preparing the car the driver was to use.

  Jean had always loved speed: late in the evening of 11 August, two days before the La Baule race, he decided to give the car, a 57C tank model, a final run on the long straight stretch between Molsheim and Strasbourg. Mechanics had been placed on guard at the side turnings to make sure that the route was kept clear. Still, at ten at night, Jean felt safe to assume that he would have the road to himself. He let the heavy supercharged machine out to its full speed, 235 kph.

  Sometime shortly before midnight, Ettore Bugatti was called to the telephone at Laeken, the palace belonging to King Leopold. He was told that a cyclist had pedalled off a sideroad and into the path of the Bugatti. The bonnet, swerving, caught him at an angle and tossed him clear, although with broken wrists. Th
e car, out of control, swung left, smashed into two trees, lurched right, hit another tree, and split in half. When they found Jean’s body, his hands still gripped the wheel.18

  For Ettore, roaring through the night towards Molsheim in his great Royale, the sense of bewilderment and loss was devastating. All his efforts to keep Jean from racing, to protect his life, had come to nothing. He had lost his oldest son and with him, the company’s brightest hope for the future. Jean, since 1933, had been in charge of the factory and, although Ettore had sometimes been unwilling to acknowledge it in the past, producing designs as innovative and visually ravishing as his own.

  On 26 August, King Leopold agreed to the immediate mobilization of Belgium’s troops to protect his country from invasion; it was tactfully indicated to Ettore that he, as an Italian national, at a time when Italy was supporting Germany, could no longer expect to be provided with factory space at Antwerp. Dazed by Jean’s death, Bugatti accepted his friend’s decision.

  Three weeks later Hitler’s armed forces invaded Poland. Under instruction from the War Ministry, Ettore Bugatti began to arrange the transfer of all machinery from the threatened province of Alsace west to Bordeaux; here he was to undertake making crankshafts for Hispano-Suiza V-12 aircraft engines.