CHIRON, THE MAN

Bugatti celebrates its best pre-war driver

The new supercar is named after the Bugatti’s main man as far as its early racing years are concerned. Louis Chiron, born in Monaco in 1899, drove for France’s Maréchal Foch during WW1. After the war he became a ‘dancing partner’ for rich women in Monte Carlo’s Hotel de Paris, and in 1923 he drove his first events in a Brescia Bugatti before moving on to a T35.

In 1926 Chiron bought a T35B thanks to sponsorship from pharmaceuticals heir Alfred Hoffman, with whose wife he later eloped. Grand Prix success soon came, with six wins in 1928 and two in 1929, the year he set up the first Monaco GP. Despite six GP wins during 1931 and 1932 with a T51, Hoffman sacked Chiron from his team. Bugatti itself, for whose works team Chiron had also been driving, did the same, citing Chiron’s inability to follow team orders.

So Chiron set up a team with his fast friend Rudolf Caracciola for 1933, then moved to Scuderia Ferrari’s Alfa Romeos with great success. In 1936 he drove for Mercedes-Benz and crashed heavily in the German GP, leading to retirement from GP racing; but after WW2 he returned, first with Talbot-Lago, then with Maserati, winning the 1949 French GP in the former. He finally stopped racing in 1956, but continued to organise (and start) the Monaco GP right up to his death in 1979.

Chiron, in later life known as ‘The Old Fox’, was ever debonair, but he was also caught up in a scandal. Hellé Nice, France’s leading female Bugatti racer, was accused by Chiron in 1949 of having been a Gestapo informer. This allegation is hotly refuted by Nice’s biographer, Miranda Seymour, but it destroyed her career. Why Chiron did it remains unclear.