1949 FIAT-SIMCA 1500 SPIDER SPÉCIALE LE MANS 1950

French title
Chassis n° 902632

Raced at Le Mans in 1950 with Brault/Paimpol
Built and prepared with great care
A quick and original car

To tell the remarkable tale of this extraordinary spider, we also need to recount that of Jean Brault, a garage owner from Chartres with a love of motorsport. For the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1949, he prepared Camille Hardy’s 4 CV (a first!), despite the reluctance of Renault, which was not yet interested in the event. Brault himself drove a Delahaye 135 S with Henri Leblanc and achieved a very creditable tenth place. It was not his first race, as he had already taken part in the Andrézieu Grand Prix on 19 May 1946 with a Simca-Gordini, and in a race at Rouen in 1949, driving a Fiat roadster he had built himself.
In the meantime, he had become friends with Louis Paimpol, who owned the ‘Veau d’or’ butcher’s shop in Le Mans, with his charming wife behind the counter. Paimpol joined his friend in the pits at the Le Mans in 1949, where he was much taken with the heady atmosphere at the track, and agreed to team up with him for the famous race the following year. To finance their entry, Paimpol came up with the idea of approaching his customers, who, “inspired by Jeannette’s beautiful eyes” (to quote Michel Bonté, a specialist in the race who told the story in his book Les 72 au départ), reached into their wallets for this unusual funding campaign.
For their venture, the two men used the Fiat Brault had driven at Rouen. It was based on a Simca chassis with a very simple, specially-built body and a Fiat in-line 6-cylinder engine like those fitted to the firm’s saloons from 1935. Brault prepared the car with particular care: having raced with a Gordini, we can imagine that he was inspired by the methods used by ‘The Sorcerer’, and he succeeded in doubling the power of the engine, getting 100bhp out of it (a figure confirmed when the car was restored in 2004). In L'Équipe dated 24 June 1950, Charles Faroux referred to “a 6-cylinder Fiat (1483cc) driven by Brault and Paimpol, a very solid- looking car, from which a good performance should be expected”. The two friends drove their ‘special’ for 11 hours before retiring with gearbox trouble.

It is this very car that we are offering for sale today. After Le Mans, the car was used at Montlhéry by the AGACI (an association of independent racing drivers) before going on to a succession of clearly identified owners who are listed in the car’s history file. In February 2004, it was offered for sale by the Galerie des Damiers, from whom its current owner bought it. A true enthusiast with a penchant for 1930s racers and original cars, he sent it to Philippe Rucheton’s Ruphil garage at La Garenne- Colombes. Rucheton recreated the missing sections of the body, particularly at the front, with the help of numerous period photographs, while respecting as far as possible the car’s original integrity. Inside the car, the original paintwork was kept and, movingly, the racing number 37 from Le Mans in 1950 was found under the AGACI logo! The new owner’s goal was to take part in the Le Mans Classic in July 2004, and the car was finished just in time after being run in on the drive from Paris to Le Mans, the night before the event!
Since then, the car – which was displayed at the 24 Hours of Le Mans Museum in 2015 as part of the exhibition ‘Les Sarthois dans la course’ – has become a familiar face at the Le Mans Classic, where it took part without interruption from 2004 to 2018, or eight times in all! The family team have done a wonderful job together, the owner’s three children joining in the fun for this unrivalled event. The Fiat – which is fully road-legal – has also been driven regularly on the road.
This well-maintained original car will enable its new owner to relive the atmosphere of Le Mans from a time when amateurs could still race there without spending a fortune. It comes with its 2007 FIVA and 2019 FFSA passports, as well as a French HTP from 2019.

Photo © Romaric Croisile

The auction of this lot will take place on Friday 18 March 2022.
https://www.artcurial.com/fr/lot-ca-1949-fiat-simca-1500-spider-speciale-le-mans-1950-4134-134