THE KEY PLAYERS CAME FROM ALL points of the compass. From the south the Ferraris; seven of them, including four monster 340 Americas with their 4.1-litre V12 motors. Soon-to-be F1 world champion Alberto Ascari was there too, in the same 250 S in which Giovanni Bracco had heroically taken on the might of the works Mercedes-Benz team in the Mille Miglia just weeks earlier and, subsisting on a diet of brandy and cigarettes, prevailed. Of the Mercs, more in a moment...
From the west came the Americans or, to be precise, an American. Briggs Cunningham and his fleet of three C4-R racers, two open, one closed, with over 300bhp from their raceprepped hemi-headed Chrysler V8 motors. Cunningham was not there to make up the numbers, but to provide the biggest crosspond challenge to the European racing aristocracy since Brisson and Bloch’s Stutz Blackhawk came achingly close to upsetting the Bentley applecart in 1928.
The north? Well, that would be the Brits. Three works Aston Martin DB3s arrived, a year late perhaps but keen to show what they could do. But really all eyes were on the Jaguars. They’d won the year before with the brand new C-type and now there were three of them, sporting new low-drag bodywork that made up in purpose and presence whatever they had lost in pulchritude.
And then there were the Germans from the east. Three gleaming W194 ‘300 SL’ coupés, their gullwing doors being the most elegant way imaginable of meeting door aperture regulations with the high, wide sills required to bequeath sufficient structural strength to its spidery tubular frame. It was these cars that were the reason for the Jaguars so dramatically changing their appearance, and we’ll be getting to that shortly too.
But not before looking at those from France itself. It seemed there wasn’t much:
there was the Gordini of course, with Jean
