Octane Magazine

SO GOOD ROLLS-ROYCE COPIED IT

THE CATALOGUE FOR the Hispano-Suiza J12 said it so well: ‘Every race, every species, every human creation has its aristocracy, chosen either by selection or by perfection. You have the horse and the thoroughbred, the dog and the greyhound, the boat and the yacht, the aeroplane and the fighter aircraft. And there are also the automobile and the Hispano-Suiza…’

It was no idle boast: this really was a car like no other. When the Hispano-Suiza J12 (Type 68) was launched at the 1931 Paris Salon in October 1931, the doyen of French motoring journalists, Charles Faroux of La Vie Automobile, drove one of the new 12-cylinder cars hard and fast from Paris to Nice and back – a distance of some 950 miles. Arriving at the company’s showrooms, he parked the Hispano-Suiza over a huge sheet of white paper. Not a drop of oil or water sullied that paper.

The new J12 was a dramatic riposte to the general atmosphere of ‘extreme conservatism’ that dominated the 1931 Salon, which the American magazine declared was evidenced by ‘retrenchment and efforts to cut

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