The other car I raced in France, the unique Jaguar E2A, was reaching at least 173mph, some 115mph faster than the old Ford

Racing a car with a top speed of 58mph at Le Mans does sound like one great yawn. Wrong; it wasn’t even a little bit boring. What made me keen to drive the Ford Model T Montier Speciale, entered by Ford France in the 2010 Le Mans Classic, was that Charles Montier and Albert Ouriou took this actual car to 14th place in the first ever Le Mans 24 Hours, way back in 1923, at an average speed of 43.35mph. I love all that authentic history stuff just as much as outright speed, I must admit.

The other car I raced in France, the unique Jaguar E2A that Dan Gurney and Walt Hansgen drove in 1960, was reaching at least 173mph, some 115mph faster than the old Ford. The speed of this legendary Jaguar, which I shared with Stefan Ziegler and Rob Newall, was properly stunning but the Model T Speciale was equally challenging. No kidding, it was demanding. As co-driver Philippe Loisel said to me after qualifying, ‘I have all the confidence of a French soldier on the eve of the Battle of Agincourt.’

The straights at Le Mans are long and fast like nowhere else but, as ever, it’s the corners that require the real work. With very smooth driving on carefully chosen lines, it was possible if not easy to take almost the entire Porsche Curves section with the Montier’s hand throttle held wide open. With other truly ancient automobiles around, there was never a dull moment.

The Model T has no front brakes and only a weak transmission clamp to slow the rear wheels. Totally original, including its special two-speed rear axle, it was superbly prepared by Jean-Pierre Lair of Ford France. My other co-driver, local girl Mélina Priam, did a fine job. Obviously, we were way off the pace of the quickest pre-war entries but our car was reliable and completed the event, much faster than it has in the past, 39th overall in our field of 69.

In the night qualifying session, looking down the vibrating blue bonnet at the glass temperature bulb above the radiator as we trundled along that familiar straight road, it all seemed a little unreal. But I thought of Messieurs Montier and Ouriou all those years ago and came to respect their great achievement.

Stefan’s Jaguar E2A, which hasn’t raced anywhere for 50 years, has been returned to raceworthy trim with expert sensitivity by CKL Developments. Despite that, it did one of those things that racing cars do every now and then. The moment qualifying began, a mystery electrical fault caused a terrible misfire. That was rectified but it put us at the back of the enormous grid.

Stefan and Rob worked their way up the field but ran out of fuel just before the end of race one. The qualifying sessions are really too short at this meeting, so a simple misfire makes accurate fuel calculations impossible. Their progress in race two allowed me
to start our third and last race from the fifth row, and E2A ran perfectly to sixth place that time.

My brain is reeling from two consecutive weekends of varied action. Just as the Ford Montier was the oldest car at this year’s Le Mans Classic, the 1902 Mercedes Simplex I drove at the Goodwood Festival of Speed hillclimb was the oldest car present and, indeed, the world’s oldest surviving Mercedes. My other Goodwood entries were a very fast 1930s-type Miller-Offenhauser Indy device and Chris Evans’ even faster Ferrari TR250. As ever, Chris generously made his Ferraris available, raising a mighty pile of cash for Children In Need.

The big danger at Goodwood, I convinced myself, was that things would run late and I’d miss the Veuve Clicquot on the lawn before the Festival of Speed dinner on Saturday night. As the Mercedes was in the last batch of the day, I took the precaution of changing into my dinner jacket before that run. With cars that old, there’s no requirement to wear a helmet, so all I had to do was grab my goggles and take two big steps up onto the driving platform.

The dinner on Saturday was a splendid occasion with 1200 guests. Our table included Steve Soper, Anthony Reid and Peter Stevens, three names which surely need no introduction here. The fifth gentleman at the table was a pleasant fellow, a self-made billionaire with no strong interest in cars. He announced that he had once been driven round a circuit by ‘a real racing driver’, adding the informative comment, ‘They go incredibly fast, you know.’ In the silence that followed, perhaps to our credit, nobody laughed.

TONY DRON

Having started his racing career in Formula Ford, Tony made a name for himself in 1970s Touring Cars and since then has raced an astonishing variety of sports and historic machinery. He is also a hugely respected journalist.