The Fast Times of Albert Champion

by Peter Joffre Nye

  IT WAS A WORLD OF A VERY DIFFERENT TIME SECTOR, AND IT IS HARDLY COMPREHENSIBLE TO US NOW.

  —GRIFFITH BORGESON, THE GOLDEN AGE OF THE AMERICAN RACING CAR1

  For years telegrams had been inundating the AC Spark Plug Company headquarters testifying to races won and records set by cars powered by the company’s spark plugs. Peter DePaolo won the 1925 Indy 500 driving a Duesenberg that Champion had bought for him to test spark plugs and air and oil filters. He made Indy history as the first winner to average 100 mph.2 DePaolo, one of the monarchs of motorsport, was so grateful that he visited Albert and Edna Champion at their Colberry estate.3 One morning the Indy 500 winner took over the Cadillac from Champion’s chauffeur,4 Conrad A. Ramberg, and drove The Chief to work. Flashing his gap-toothed grin as he shifted gears with consummate precision into turns, DePaolo had no problem driving the distance in record time. “We had some ride,” Ramberg recalled of how fast DePaolo went.5

  On May 9, 1926, US Navy pilot Richard E. Byrd and pilot-mechanic Floyd Bennett flew circles around the North Pole in brilliant sunlight as part of their sixteen-hour roundtrip from Spitsbergen, Norway, with AC Spark Plugs firing the triple engines of their heavy German Fokker.6 Byrd, a lieutenant commander, was hailed in the press as an American hero. He received a ticker-tape parade up Broadway in New York City. President Calvin Coolidge decorated him in the White House with the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest US military honor.

  Byrd was widely seen as the most likely aviator to fly nonstop across the Atlantic, between New York and Paris, to at last claim the prestigious $25,000 Orteig Prize ($329,000 in 2014), which had been up for grabs since 1919.7 The prize had been offered by the New York hotelier Raymond Orteig to commemorate the friendships between pilots from the United States and France during the war.8 Orteig was impressed with Eddie Rickenbacker, America’s most illustrious ace pilot. Rickenbacker had flown Nieuports in the famous Lafayette Esquadrille (small squadron) because the US Army lacked combat aircraft. Rickenbacker had said in a speech that he looked forward to the day when the two countries would be linked by air routes. Orteig, a native of southern France, had immigrated to New York at age twelve and had made his fortune as owner of the Hotel Lafayette and Hotel Brevoort. In the spirit of Franco-American cooperation, he had donated the cash prize, which was available to flyers from any nation and administered under the auspices of the not-for-profit National Aeronautic Association.9

  Champion regarded aviation as the ultimate test for technology. He was liberal about distributing aviation spark plugs to Byrd and other pilots, who would in turn provide their thoughts on ways to improve reliability. The prospect of flying nonstop across the Atlantic had powerful skeptics. The eminent insurance company Lloyds of London announced odds of ten to one against anyone making the flight successfully to claim the Orteig Prize.10

  April 1927 proved cruel to attempts to beat those odds. Navy Commander Byrd’s Fokker crash-landed on a training flight.11 New Yorker Clarence Chamberlain survived his plane’s landing gear tearing loose on takeoff.12 Crewmen of Noel Davis and Stanton Wooster were killed in a test flight.13 In early May French aviators Charles Nungesser and François Coli, both decorated war veterans, took off from Le Bourget Aérodrome outside Paris, bound for New York—only to disappear.14

  None of the disastrous news discouraged twenty-five-year-old US Air Mail pilot Charles Lindbergh. He took off alone on May 20 in the sleek, single-wing Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field on Long Island and flew thirty-six hundred miles in thirty-three hours to land safely at Le Bourget Aérodrome.15 The plane’s Wright “Whirlwind” nine-cylinder air-cooled engine ran perfectly on AC Spark Plugs.16

  AC Champion Spark Plugs fired 28,944,000 sparks to keep the engine of Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis flying over the Atlantic into history. This ad from 1927 lists some of the two hundred automobiles that also used AC equipment.

  Commenting on the record flight, Champion told reporters: “There is no question but what speedway records of distance from short spurts of a mile or two, upwards to a total of 500, are a severe test for spark plugs, but they cannot compare with the terrific strain endured in flights of this kind.17 The slightest defect in any one would spell the difference between success and disaster. One will realize the severe service the spark plugs are required to render when it is figured that at the average estimated speed of Captain Lindbergh’s plane, about 115 miles per hour, the spark plugs were called upon to deliver without failure a total of 28,944,000 sparks.”

  Lindbergh had made aviation history. Overnight he became an international folk hero. Paris cafés overflowed with celebrators. New Yorkers lauded him in a rousing parade up Broadway. President Calvin Coolidge invited him to meet in Washington, DC. And, of course, Lindbergh laid claim to the Orteig Prize—the hotelier presented him with a medal and the $25,000 check in a ceremony at his Hotel Brevoort.18

  In early June Clarence Chamberlain took off from Roosevelt Field and flew to Eisleben, Germany,19 a distance of nearly four thousand miles. Later that month, Byrd followed as the third pilot to fly across the Atlantic—cloud cover prevented him from landing at Le Bourget Aérodrome, so he circled back and made an emergency landing, without injury, on the coast of Normandy.20

  Champion said that of his achievements, he was most proud that aviators had staked their lives on his products.21 Some of their success shined on him as a Franco-American success.

  He took out ads in magazines promoting Lindbergh’s iconic plane flying low over the Atlantic, and in newspapers promoting both Lindbergh and Chamberlain.

  That spring Champion oversaw the introduction of innovative fuel pumps for feeding gasoline to auto engines that have been standard ever since.22 He employed thirty-five hundred workers in factories occupying sixteen acres on a twenty-acre site in Flint.23 Plants in England and France employed another five hundred. His AC Spark Plug Company made the world’s greatest number of dashboards, air and oil filters, and spark plugs.24 He submitted more patents applications, including for air and oil filters,25 from the US Patent Office, for what came to be a total of thirty US patents. His advancements and products contributed to GM car and truck sales topping 1.5 million in 1927,26 with nearly 1 million Chevies sold.27 Henry Ford, admitting that his beloved Model T had been left behind by the competition, shut down “Tin Lizzies” to introduce the new Model A. General Motors leaped over Ford to dominate the auto industry worldwide—a status GM held for most of the century.

  Despite all Champion’s success, he and Edna bickered more and more often about money. She came to realize that work was more important to him than marriage. It didn’t help that her younger sister, Emily, the actress, had taken Champion’s prized Marmon Speedster for an eventful joy ride. When a Model T cost $500, Cadillacs ranged up to $3,000; Marmon Speedsters went for $5,300.28 Marmons were the fastest production car in American and were bought for their speed. A Stutz Bearcat could do 80 mph. Marmon Speedsters were capable of cruising 85-plus mph. Emily, his sister-in-law, lost control of his Marmon and drove it into a lake.29 He never forgave her.30

  When Champion left the factory around five o’clock, he carried with him a leather briefcase, which he dubbed his “traveling desk.”31 He filled it with letters and memoranda that crossed his desk during the day so he could read as chauffeur Conrad Ramberg drove him some forty minutes home to Colberry. Once there, he walked the two family dogs around the grounds. He dined with Edna at the usual time. Then he extracted more papers from his traveling desk to prepare for the next day’s agenda.

  At forty-nine, he had no intention of slowing down his schedule. A concession to age was depending on eyeglasses. During the traditional slow news month of August, the Detroit News ran a feature titled “Work Is Albert Champion’s Main Pastime—Says He Can’t Quit Now.”

  “People say to me, ‘Albert, you have all the money you’ll ever want, why in the world don’t you stop and have a good time?’ I always laugh. If they only realized it. I am having t
he time of my life right now.”32

  When Champion returned home after his work days, he relaxed with a cigar and took his dogs for a walk. He taught the puppies commands in French, which his wife, Edna, did not speak. As a result, she was unable to control them. Photo courtesy of Kerry Champion Williams.

  Champion monitored the progress of employee Albert Guyot Jr., the son of the French racecar driver who had finished sixth driving a Duesenberg at the 1921 Grand Prix de France. The junior Guyot was being groomed for management at Champion’s Levallois-Perret factory.33 Another in management was the famous French aviator, war hero, and ace Captain Alfred Heurtaux. “He has eight sons, and they will come to me when they are old enough,” Champion said. “We both want to make men of them.”34

  Champion also provided a summer job for his nephew Albert Prosper Champion, age twelve, the eldest son of Prosper Champion. The youngster punched the time clock, in and out four times a day as employee number 51-121.35 He sorted mail and distributed it through the sprawling factory. “I know every department in the plant and who’s responsible for it,” nephew Champion said. “Have to know that to take the mail and carry messages. I know everything we make and whom we make it for.”36

  Albert took a keen interest in his nephew and Prosper’s two other sons. He promised to fund scholarships for his nephews to attend college.37 He told Prosper he would rewrite his will, which left everything to Edna, and make sure that half his estate would go to his nephews. But first he had to attend the annual Paris Auto Salon. For the first time since the Paris Auto Salon resumed after the war it was admitting German automakers and journalists, a sign that things were returning to the prewar normal.

  Edna Champion on a trip to Miami Beach in early 1927, one of the last trips she and Albert took together. Photo courtesy of Kerry Champion Williams.

  On October 1, Champion and Edna sailed from New York on the luxury French liner Île de France, celebrated for its modernistic Art Deco designs,38 with Walter Chrysler and GM leaders Alfred Sloan, Charles Kettering, Charles Stewart Mott, and Laurence Fisher of the Fisher autobody division. Other passengers included author Anita Loos, on a business trip to promote foreign editions of her new novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and French tennis star and sportswear manufacturer René Lacoste.

  Once again in Paris, Champion shuttled between a series of meetings. Edna, left alone, renewed her friendship with Charles Brazelle, still estranged from his wife in Biarritz and residing in the Hôtel Crillon, one of the City of Light’s most prestigious accommodations. He turned on the charm and listened to her marriage woes.

  On Wednesday evening, October 26, Albert and Edna dined with his longtime friend Henri Desgrange, publisher of the sports newspaper L’Auto and director of the Tour de France. The newspaper’s editor and dinner host Charles Faroux wrote: “All this time Albert Champion is happy, enthusiastic as usual, bubbly about grandiose projects, once more communicating to us his ardor for life, his combative alacrity, his love of action, which constituted a personality so moving.”39

  After dinner, they all met Alfred P. Sloan and spent the rest of the night hobnobbing.40 For Edna, it must have been a relief to talk in English with Sloan, as she was isolated from the others carrying on in streams of French.

  The next morning, Albert and Edna quarreled in their Hôtel Meurice suite. Edna declared that she wanted to leave Albert for Charlie Brazelle.41 Albert argued that she needed him because she had no money. She reminded him that he had given her $40,000 of GM stock.42 He threatened that he had an enormous number of shares and could manipulate them to drive down their value.43 She retorted that she had $50,000 worth of jewelry that she could sell.44 Champion seized her jewelry box and had it locked up in the hotel safe.45 Then he left. He had a busy day, starting with an appointment with Pierre Tournier for a tour of the renovated AC Titan factory in Levallois-Perret. Later he planned to have dinner with his friend Constant Huret.

  Early that afternoon he returned with Tournier to the suite at the Hôtel Meurice, where Champion expected to find Edna waiting. The suite was empty. Champion and Tournier walked across the Tuileries Quarter to the Hôtel Crillon.

  Champion spotted Edna in a gilded-oak gallery lounge. Chic, with bobbed hair cut at her jaw line straight as a ruler below a cloche hat, she leaned across a marble table. She gestured with a cigarette in her fingers, talking to Charlie Brazelle. Albert approached the table, close enough now to smell the scent of perfume he had watched Edna apply that morning. The well-mannered hush of the lounge was suddenly broken when he demanded that his wife accompany him immediately back to their hotel.46

  Brazelle stood, shrugging his shoulders and murmuring in French.47 A former US Army officer, he’d been stationed in France during the war and had polished his command of the language. He was stout, taller than Champion, and closer to Edna’s age. A confrontation seemed imminent. Champion erupted with jealousy.

  The New York Daily News would report that he and Brazelle argued over Edna, their words escalating louder and harsher: “Finally blows were struck by Charlie and Albert, both sputtering in French, which Edna did not understand. Then Champion staggered off.”48

  As Champion and Tournier shuffled back through the Tuileries Quarter to the Hôtel Meurice, by chance they were but a short kilometer from where Champion had grown up as the son of a widowed washerwoman who struggled to feed him and three younger brothers. At one point, he slowed down and halted.49 Perhaps Tournier thought about the punch Champion had taken, but he had seen him endure disastrous crashes. Champion intended to relax in his suite in the Hôtel Meurice and wait for Edna to join him at 5:30 for cocktails and dinner with life-long friend Constant Huret.

  In the Tuileries Quarter, however, Champion complained of a stomach-ache.50 He and Tournier detoured to a pharmacy.51 Champion described his symptoms to a pharmacist who dispensed aspirin and advised him to consult a doctor right away.

  Tournier accompanied him to his suite. When Champion reclined on his bed, his forehead broke into beads of sweat.52 Tournier called for the house doctor, but Albert died at 4:30 in Tournier’s arms.53

  An hour later, Constant Huret arrived at the hotel to meet his buddy for dinner. Instead, he learned the sad news that Champion was dead.54

  News of Champion’s unexpected death, attributed to a heart attack, set the massive iron printing presses thundering at newspapers in Paris, around Europe, and in the United States. Paris’s Figaro called Champion “the astonishing Frenchman among Americans.”55 The Boston Globe headlined his life: “Brilliant Career.”56 The Associated Press wire-service coverage in US newspapers stated: “His death closed a career as brilliant as that of any Horatio Alger hero, from errand boy in Paris, France, to millionaire automobile accessories manufacturer in America.”57

  Gendarmes arrested Edna and Brazelle and held them in jail during an investigation.58 Witnesses from the Hôtel Crillon were interviewed. Brazelle claimed Champion always had a weak heart and got mad once too often, which caused a heart attack. The US Army veteran, who had done his duty aiding the French to win the war, held an advantage over Champion the draft dodger lying dead in the morgue. Edna, in mourning, pleaded that she had to make arrangements either to bring her late husband’s body back to Flint or to have him buried in Paris at Père Lachaise.

  Finally Brazelle and Edna were released without charge, in time to attend Champion’s memorial service on the afternoon of November 3, seven days after his death, at the Church of the American on Avenue Georges V.59 Prosper Champion and his wife and their three sons came from Flint for the funeral,60 and brother Louis arrived from New York.61 Hundreds filled the church and hundreds more collected outside.

  Edna was robed in widow’s black and behaved with grace in the pew. Brazelle, in mourning clothes, sat next to her. She had been living without her multimillionaire husband allowing her to have her own money. Now he was gone and she inherited his millions. She would no longer have to live in Flint; she could now afford a luxurious life in New
York. Later it was said that she giggled and laughed into her handkerchief through the ceremony.62 Her in-laws, however, thought they had heard the muffled sounds of grief.

  Edna followed her husband’s wishes and ordered a mausoleum built of marble for him in Paris’s revered Père Lachaise cemetery, celebrated today as the final resting place of Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Frédéric Chopin, Edith Piaf, and, the rare American Jim Morrison. Edna also commissioned a sculptor to make a bust of him.63 Almost a year later, on July 24, 1928, she returned to Paris to have her late husband entombed in his mausoleum. It had an opening on one side a few feet from the ground to display the bust, since hidden behind a frosted-glass window. Edna arranged to have the remains of his mother, Marie Blanche Champion, moved from the cemetery in St. Cloud to rest with him as permanent Parisians.64

  Albert Champion rests with his mother, Marie Blanche Carpentier Champion, in the famous Paris cemetery Père Lachaise. Neighbors include rocker Jim Morrison and singer Edith Piaf. Photo courtesy of Bernadette Murphy.

  “I’M NO GIGOLO!” CHARLES BRAZELLE TELLS WHY.

  —NEW YORK DAILY MIRROR, APRIL 26, 19351

  Edna and Charlie lived together in a New York hotel and Brazelle’s wife stayed in France while Champion’s estate was settled over the next year.2 General Motors bought the stock that Champion had amassed and took over the company as a division, surviving today as ACDelco. Basil De Guichard served as executor of his estate,3 and he succeeded Champion as president of AC Spark Plug Company.4

  In 1928 Edna inherited about $12 million ($163 million in 2014), making her one of the richest women in America in charge of her own fortune.5