Graham Gauld Chronicles Henri Julien

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

The village of Gonfaron in the Var section of Provence in the South of France is famous for two things: its Village des Tortues and the late owner of Automobiles Gonfaronnaises, Henri Julien. They are strange bedfellows because the Village des Tortues is a form of hospice and centre concerned with the care and breeding of tortoises.

If you are interested in tortoises this is the place to go as there are around 2500 of them covering a site of two hectares and it is one of many centres around the world dedicated to maintaining the species.

The tortoise is also one of the slowest moving animals.

As for Henri Julien, who died in 2013, I got to know him well during my life in the South of France and is the diametric opposite for he is the French privateer “garagiste” who developed his own Formula 1 car, the AGS, and is credited with bringing on the early careers of a number of French grand prix drivers in the 1970’s and ‘80s.

So there you have your choice: the slow tortoise or Formula 1! Tough call.

The Julien family were owners of a petrol station in Gonfaron, to which Henri’s father added a working garage called the Garage de l’Avenir (the garage of the future). Henri’s trained as an engineer in Toulon and he returned to his home town and took over the running of the garage in 1947 when he was 20 years of age.
He was a bit of a petrolhead and in 1946 found out there was going to be a race called the Grand Prix de Nice.

The previous year, 1945, we had seen the first two European races a mere three months after the end of WWII and now the Automobile Club of Nice was organizing a race round the streets. The entry list was astonishing with no fewer than ten Maseratis, two Bugattis, two Delahayes and two Alfa Romeos, all of which had been dug out of sheds where they had lain hidden for over six years.

One of the spectators at the event was Henri Julien, who watched Luigi Villoresi win the race in a Maserati 4CL ahead of Raymond Sommer with a 308 Alfa Romeo, and that got him interested in racing.

It was the Brits who came up with the idea of using motor-cycle engines in small self-built racing cars and the sport’s ruling body created Formula 3 in 1950 for racing cars of 500ccs cubic capacity which became instantly popular.

In France, however, they set up their own category which they called Racer 500 that was launched in October 1949.
Henri’s first attempt at a racing car was powered by a Simca engine and it was this that set Julien off as a race car constructor, followed by a BMW-engined car. In 1957 he produced the Julien-Panhard which he called the JH3 with a larger 850cc DB-Panhard engine and front wheel drive.

However, it was the launch of Formula Junior in 1959 that caught his attention and he ran in the Monaco Junior race that supported the Monaco Grand Prix that year. Henri finished at the back of the field with his JH4 Julien-Panhard and later stopped building his own cars. In 1964 he ran a Lotus 22 in Formula 3 and then an Alpine 270 Renault but he had virtually no success and retired from racing.

He then set up Automobiles Gonfaronnaises Sportives (AGS) and decided to go back into producing cars for the starter classes such as Formula France, Formula Renault and Formula 3. Their BMW engined 2 litre Formula 2 car was the last car to win the Formula 2 category in 1984 before Formula 3000 was created. Philippe Streiff won that last ever 2 litre F2 race at Brands Hatch.

Consider this. At the end of the 1985 racing season, when the factory Renault Formula 1 team pulled out of racing, it was Henri Julien who bought a lot of the parts and equipment used by Renault to create his own Formula 1 car. He struck a deal with the Italian Jolly Club and the new grand prix engine manufacturer Motori Moderni to run his first AGS Formula 1 car at the 1986 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Their entire racing team arrived at Monza, all six of them including their driver, the Italian Ivan Capelli, and they managed to qualify for the race not only at Monza but at the next one in Canada. For 1987 Henri had already designed and built a new car, the JH22, equipped with the latest Ford Cosworth DFZ V8 engine. That year they scored their first point in the World Championship in Adelaide when Roberto Moreno finished sixth.

They also ran Pascal Fabre, who at least finished in all but three of the races he ran that season but it was clear from the start that AGS were not going to set the world of Formula 1 alight. However, Henri was not going to give up and developed a new car, the JH23, for 1988 and brought in another Frenchman, Philippe Streiff, who was to give him his best results.

He consistently finished in the midfield or else had mechanical trouble but clearly Julien was fighting above his weight, yet despite the travelling expenses for this small team he came back in 1989 this time with Italian Gabrielle Tarquini driving. They were rewarded with 6th place in the Mexican Grand Prix and 7th at Phoenix, but it was not enough and Henri Julien withdrew from Grand Prix racing after Tarquini retired in the French Grand Prix that year. He sold the entire AGS team to Cyril de Rouvre whose family were in the sugar business, but they ran in only a handful of races running at the back of the field in 1991 before the team withdrew from racing.

Henri Julien was not finished, however, as he was now involved in a completely new race circuit in Provence not far from his hometown of Gonfaron, called Le Luc. He provided one or two of the AGS Formula 1 cars and created a package deal alongside the construction of a group of Formula 3 AGS cars whereby enthusiasts could buy a package that included circuit driving lessons with the Formula 3 cars graduating to driving an AGS Formula 1 car. This proved to be popular and on a visit to the circuit I was surprised to see not only a full workshop but a line up of brand-new Formula 3 cars and a Formula 1 car converted as a two-seater to give rides to brave enthusiasts driven by one of the instructors.

This scheme is still in operation at the circuit and you can look it up at https://www.goldenmoments.co.uk/formula-one-experience-day-gold-course.html.

As for Henri Juilien, he returned to his workshop and the last time I visited him he was rebuilding one of his very first Racer 500 racing cars with all his racing souvenirs around him. Clearly his entire racing experiences were being run on a shoestring but his total enthusiasm for racing and the distance he travelled to the highest echelons of the sport deserves praise for tenacity and enthusiasm. When it came to racing he was certainly no tortoise but was the toast of Gonfaron.