Davison’s Le Mans: Privileged in France

By Eric Davison
Be sure to listen to the Matra V-12, below!

The month of May is regarded by American racing fans as “Indy” month. In France and in most of Europe June belongs to Le Mans.

In January of 1972 we (me, my wife and two sons) were sent to France where I took up residence in the Paris office of McCann-Erickson Advertising as the resident guru on the General Motors/Opel business. It was a dream assignment. My wife, the lovely Mary, was ecstatic and our two sons ages 14 and 11were anxious to leave Michigan where we had returned after spending a couple of years in Mexico. They were up for another adventure. Plus, beyond all the joys of Paris, there was the sunshine of Saint Tropez, skiing in Chamonix, and to top it all off, there was Le Mans. And we were going!

It was easy to work my way into the good graces of my new GM associates. To most Europeans racing is a very important activity and when they found out that I was a rabid enthusiast, I was welcomed by Jean-Louis Maesen, the Opel Marketing Director and included in their Le Mans activity.

The GM-Opel crew did have some stake in the race. As he worked his way up the Opel success ladder Bob Lutz once held the assignment as head of merchandising at the executive offices in Russelsheim, Germany. Ever the performance guy, Lutz developed a relationship with Henri Greder, a talented race car driver who had considerable European success driving Opels. For Le Mans he was paired with Marie-Claude Charmasson who drove under the pseudonym of Marie-Claude “Beaumont” in a Corvette. Marie-Claude was one great looking race car driver and would have given Danica Patrick serious competition in the run for the Sports Illustrated swim suit edition. The deal had been created by Bob Lutz and supported by GM-France.

I read that Lutz was only paid something like $25 to $30,000 per year at Opel but he had already left GM before I arrived. I am sorry for that as I suspect that life under Lutz would have been interesting. Opel’s loss was BMWs gain and he left Opel to become head of BMW sales (at considerably more money.)

I don’t know if it is folklore or not but legend has it that when Lutz went back to Opel to clean out his desk, he transported himself in the BMW helicopter, landed it on the Opel front lawn and left the rotors turning while he gathered his stuff. If this is true it is not hard to imagine the stern Germans trying to control themselves over the young ungrateful upstart’s actions.

GM-France held the lease on what had been the concierge’s house at the Le Mans track. It was located at the end of the pit lane where it blended with the main track. There was no better place to watch the Le Mans 24-hour race.

So, armed with the necessary tickets and other invitations we loaded up our Opel Ascona on Saturday morning and headed for Le Mans. When we began the journey traffic on the Autoroute was light but the more kilometers that passed the worse the traffic became until it became a good old Parisian-style traffic bouchon as we neared Chartres. As I began to curse, Mary calmly said “turn off at the next exit.”

My wife is a map freak. She cannot enjoy a trip in the car unless she has a good map to guide us. I often complain that she is missing half the scenery. Not so, she states. She claims that she can watch the map and the scenery and on top of that she not only knows exactly where we are going and exactly what towns, villages, monuments, etc that we will pass. I recently bought a GPS but she immediately discarded it. The maps were more fun for her.

For this trip she had armed herself with a group of Michelin local maps, the ones that detailed an area in specific and minute detail. For the next hour she passed out instruction: “Go left, drive two kilometers, pass through a village, go four kilometers,” etc.

France is a country of small farms and all farmers are guaranteed access to the main roads so every small road in France is marked and paved. Being a Saturday, the roads were basically empty. Because of that the drive was fabulous. While we were driving our mundane Opel Ascona Voyage, the roads were empty and I could pretend that we were in something exotic. Actually it was Porsche country. A tad of oversteer would have been perfect.

Following Mary’s directions we pulled into a parking area just a few hundred meters from our assigned entry to the track and to our GM viewing point.

The GM location was perfect. All the pomp and ceremony of Le Mans was right at our feet and we were within 30 feet of President Georges Pompidou who was to be the honorary starter.

There was no apparent secret service entourage in evidence. 1972 was not too long after the movie Day of the Jackal appeared in which De Gaulle was an assassination target. I commented to one of my hosts from GM to the effect that just about anyone who wanted to could take a shot at the current French President. Perhaps I was a bit paranoid.

I was immediately set straight by my host. His response was something like: “Pompidou was a third rate politician who had presided over a country that he had turned into a third rate power. Who would miss him and who would care if he were shot?” That shut me up.

The race was a spectacle and as always the French were accused of stacking the regulations deck: Prototypes rules were changed from five liters to three by the French-run FIA and the change was made too late for any team other than Matra to be properly prepared. Therefore, Matras were destined to win and it was a pretty safe political bet that Pompidou took by waving off the French cars in front of a rabid French crowd. It was a no-lose proposition.

The howl of those V12s as they screamed past at 11,000 rpm was painful. The noise actually hurt.

In true French style there were social functions at various places around the track. We had a magnificent meal in an old farmhouse at Arnage which allowed us to watch the cars streaming down the Mulsanne straight while dining on gourmet food washed down with excellent wine. Just walking around was an experience not to be forgotten.

We had taken a hotel room in a village about 30 km away and escaped there for a few hours sleep before returning to the noise.

As was expected, the Matra of Henri Pescarolo and Graham Hill won with second taken by Francoise Cevert and Howden Ganley. Unfortunately the Greder/“Beaumont” Corvette fell by the wayside after a run-in with the Ganley Matra in the 20th hour while running in 19th position overall.

Having made it through 24 hours, we reversed our route back through the countryside to our home in Garches, just outside Paris.

Naturally, one year was not enough. But some things changed for 1973. GM advised that they had dropped the lease on the concierge’s house and my good friend Jean-Louis Maesen, the Opel Marketing Director, was hired away by Bob Lutz to be the director of an expanded BMW operation in France. Jean-Louis and I had hit it off from the beginning. He had a marvelous sense of humor, was very smart and while he had the demeanor of a very severe French nationalist he was as open to new ideas as anyone, anywhere. Plus, he had learned to swear in English. He had been somewhat maliciously taught by a GM of Europe man and good friend who wanted to crack his very proper French demeanor.

Sometimes swearing in another language doesn’t seem like swearing. One day while in a meeting in his office I said something a bit off-color in front of his secretary…nothing bad, but enough to get his attention. “Eric” he said, “Madam Poignee heard that.”

I just about cracked up as he was far guiltier than I. “Jean-Louis, do you realize that you referred to someone as a “Mother F–C–S–” while she was in the room? His face went white until he started in with a stream of invective against his GM language/curse tutor. It was bizarre; Jean-Louis was in all ways a proper gentleman; polite, refined and educated.

I think that one thing that endeared Jean-Louis to me was the fact that GM France held roughly 4% of the market. For regular GM folks this was a disaster and not acceptable. However, Renault, Peugeot and Citroen were the major players with Simca not too far behind. Plus, for the most part, Opels were cheap and ugly little cars (Kadett) and it would be extremely unlikely for a Frenchman to break away from any French car to buy a second-rate German car. GM-France had a definite inferiority complex and, being an American and familiar with GM, I could express their view without the taint of French nationalism and self pity.

In his new assignment at BMW, one of the first things Maesen did was to take over the GM lease on the concierge’s house and assured me that I was not only invited to be a BMW guest but that there would be food and drink for the full 24 hours along with cots for those who wanted some rest.

In addition, the poster for the ‘73 event featured a photo of the rolling start of the ’72 event and while it was impossible to determine faces, Mary’s yellow and red striped jacket could be seen as a dot in the crowd on the balcony of the GM/Opel house. Alas, this poster was lost over the years and difficult to find today.

A friend in the office tried desperately but to no avail to obtain a press pass for me. That would have been the icing on the cake. However, he did manage to secure a signed-for but un-stamped photographer’s arm band. By careful work with a pen and a photo I managed to create a credential that while it would not bear close scrutiny, was good enough to get me into the pits. Being foreign, I also had the advantage of being able to plead total ignorance of the language in case I was questioned. I didn’t waste much time trying to photograph the surroundings but I did enjoy watching the pre-race preparations and soak up as much of the atmosphere as possible.

The pit area was cleared of all non-participating personnel prior to the start and I retired to the BMW hospitality house with Mary and the boys.

In 1973 Matra didn’t have it all its own way. The extra year of the new prototype regulations gave Ferrari and others the chance to catch up. While Henri Pescarolo and Gerard Larrousse were the winners, Arturo Merzario and Carlos Pace in a Ferrari weren’t far behind. Third place went to Jabouille and Jassaud in a Matra. Henri Greder and Marie-Claude finished a very respectable 12th in the Corvette.

The last I heard, Greder was living in Arizona and was still active in motorsports. Marie-Claude was, at last report, a free-lance photographer covering F1.

Trying to deal with Jean-Louis’s replacement at GM-France just about made me crazy. He didn’t like General Motors and he detested the Germans. He told me that he hated the Germans because he remembered the Opel “Blitz” (a lightning strike on the emblem on the front of the trucks) as German troops riding in Opels picked the fruit off the family trees.

“So, why don’t you go to work for a French company?” I asked. “I applied at Citroen but they wouldn’t have me,” was his reply. Smart lads, I thought.

I went to his boss, Regis Bechet, the sales manager and asked why he didn’t can him. Regis told me that under the law he couldn’t just fire him and if he demoted him he would probably quit and then what would he (Regis) do?

My reply was that he would save GM a lot of money by eliminating a serious problem.

Unfortunately my time in France was up and while I could have stayed in France and accepted Jean-Louis’s offer to go to work for BMW, I figured that after a couple of years in Mexico and a couple of years in France, it was time to make sure my boys remained Americans and I was transferred back to the McCann-Erickson Detroit office. There I was enlisted to help in the attempt to resurrect the Buick Division (which had nothing to sell but enormous gas guzzlers) after the Israeli Arab conflict of 1974 with the resulting gas shortages and lines at the pump.

Going from Paris, France to Flint, Michigan. Talk about challenges! Talk about culture shock!