From the pages of Classic & Sports Car, March 2014:
“Few know about French Ford dealer Charles Montier’s pre-war exploits with the Blue Oval at both Le Mans and at Grand Prix events.Chris Martin has put this right with this fascinating 32 page ‘Folio’ from VeloceToday Select. Highlights include the story of the 1933 twin engined GP challenger. $20 available from the author.”
We might at that if you are in Australia or New Zealand, do order your copy direct from author (and VeloceToday correspondent) Chris Martin at cmscarstuff@bigpond.com. However, if you forget and order from us, we’ll send your order to Chris to fill and it will arrive much sooner. At the same time, drop an email to the offices of Classic & Sports Car, mick.walsh@haymarket.com telling them you saw the Montier review.
VeloceToday Select Number Three: Montier’s French Racing Fords
by Chris Martin
Price: $20.00
Pages: 32
Dimensions: 8.5″ x 5.5″
Description: Shipping and handling is FREE!
Chris Martin, who spent 12 years working for F1 teams, is really an old car nut. Really old cars that is, like the Montier-Fords. Once he learned of these rare Model T and A cars that raced at Le Mans and in the Grand Prix races in the late 1920s and early 1930s, he wanted to spread the word. The best way of doing that, we thought, was to get together and create the third in our series of VeloceToday Select Folios. Like the Francophile he is, Martin tracked down photos, new information and compiled a list of all the events in which these Ford based-cars raced. It is the “greatest story never told” he said. Until now that is. Packed with historical photos, Martin takes us through three generations of Montiers who all loved creating and building cars.
In producing the Montier folio, the research had started with what has been published in the past which was very little, and that only in French. Chris was careful to investigate what has been posted on various Internet sites where it is fast becoming too common for misinformation, guesswork and plain errors to be accepted as fact once they appear in pixels (as they used to in print). The internet and search engines can be useful for study, but unfortunately these days once something is out there, fact or not, it will be repeated elsewhere often without any attempt to check the source.
Charles Montier’s younger son Georges gave a lengthy interview to a French magazine in the seventies and this was used as a reference source along with official records and race reports from the period.
From that, we can be sure that Montier was French; NOT Belgian as often stated, in fact he was born in Naples, Italy, of an Italian mother, but the family soon returned to his father’s home town of Richelieu in France and he was given French nationality. Further, he did NOT take part in the 1912 French Grand Prix, another oft repeated myth. There was a Ford T entered by Ford’s Paris agent Henri Depasse, but it did not start the race.
The Ford Speedster found in Paraguay.
Chris also hoped this publication might, by spreading awareness of the Montier name at least, result in further discoveries, and he is still trying to ascertain the whereabouts of two survivors both rumored to have recently been sold to the USA. The pretty black ‘Speedster’ was discovered a few years ago in Paraguay, South America, and although the price tag of $80,000 that appeared on an internet advertisement was obviously a tad optimistic, there was a report that it did eventually sell. This car has a well-executed two-seater bodywork, that looks nothing like any other Montier bodied cars on record, but it certainly has the genuine Montier OHV cylinder head. Here is a link to the for sale ad from 2012: http://www.arcar.org/ford-t-montier-special-en49508
Body style may be custom but the head is definitely Montier.
The other car in question has an even more colorful story. When the famous Schlumpf brothers retreated to Switzerland after the French government appropriated their collection which became the National Automobile Museum in Mulhouse, they also left behind another stash of unrestored rarities in a building in Malmerspach.
Fritz Schlumpf, and after his death his widow Arlette, fought and eventually in 1999, won a legal battle to regain these cars. There were another dozen Bugattis among others, and shortly before Arlette’s passing in 2008 she instructed a couple of well-known European vintage car dealers to discreetly dispose of the collection. It is thought the Bugattis went to Peter Mullin’s museum in Oxnard California, but there was also a lone Montier-Ford. Apparently its Weymann type fabric two-seater body was looking rather shabby, but it seems it was mechanically complete, and the only reference found since points to that also going to America. If so, it has not shown on the radar of any of the Model T Ford clubs, so does anyone know any more?
If the Monrier Ford from Paaraguay was built with the support of a French Ford agent, it might explain the Stewart Warner vacume tank. It looks like the type used on the Model L Lincolns of the same period.
Just read your informative article. The Ford Montier that was part of the Schlumpf Malmerspach Reserve Collection also came to the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California in November 2009. It is now in the storage portion of Mr. Mullin’s “French Curves” Collection.
MI PADRE Y MI TIO TENIAN UN AUTO DE PISTA CON TAPA MONTIER OHV ,CORRIO ARTURO SEIJO EN 1947 48 EN ARGENTINA CON UN MONOPOSTO CUENTA MI PADRE AMOR SEIJO QUE ESAS CULATAS QUE ERAN FRANCESAS LLEGARON A LA ARGENTINA CON UNA ESCUADRA ESTAUDINENSE DE AUTOS DE PISTA FORD T CON ELEMENTOS ESPECIALES SE LLAMARIAN LOS “DIABLOS ROJOS ” .