Lagonda's 1935 Le Mans upset: narrow victory that denied Alfa Romeo

Forced by financially straitened Clement-Talbot’s subsequent withdrawal to join Alfa Romeo’s ranks for 1933 – well, if you can’t beat them – Fox’s tight-knit team scored yet another third place before switching to a Singer for the following year and finishing seventh.

Seeking an uptick in competitiveness, Fox renewed the relationship with Lagonda that had opened his Le Mans account: a retirement in 1929 due to head gasket failure.

The Staines-based company was on its uppers, too, but the enthusiastic Fox persuaded it to supply, via agents Warwick Wright, three ‘lightweight’ and uprated versions of its M45 Rapide for the 1934 RAC Tourist Trophy, a handicap race at Ards that eschewed supercharging.

They finished fourth, fifth and eighth – a solid result befitting the equipment. Powered by Meadows’ 4.5-litre pushrod ‘six’ – good for 140bhp at 3600rpm in tweaked form – torque was the watchword for a car that weighed over 1500kg still. Two were entered for Le Mans in 1935 but few expected them to deny Alfa’s lithe and lissome, supercharged 8C a fifth consecutive victory.

Fox’s driver selection was intriguing. Hawker Siddeley test pilot Johnny Hindmarsh was a known quantity: an affable, capable and reliable team player who looked much older than his years and who had finished fourth for the team in 1930 and co-driven its Singer in 1934. Co-driver and fellow flier Luis Fontés could not have been more different. Gawky at 6ft 2in and sporting thick-rimmed spectacles, this illegitimate son of a Brazilian shipping tycoon and British mother looked every inch the student that he had so recently been: an alumnus of Loughborough Engineering College not yet 23.

Suddenly flush with the family fortune, his apparently hot-headed, last-minute hiring of John Cobb’s 8C ‘Monza’ for the 1935 JCC International Trophy at Brooklands in May caused a stir such was his inexperience: he had recorded RAC TT retirements in an MG and Invicta. His victory – the product of measured, sustained speed attained in shirt-and-tie and minus headgear – was a sensation. So, too, was his bacchanalian party in celebration. Those looks deceived in more than one way.

At the end of the same month and in the same car – now in his ownership – Fontés finished third behind a pair of faster, more modern Bugatti Type 59s in the Isle of Man’s Mannin Moar: a gruelling 200-miler on a demanding road course. Fox, for whom money was secondary to talent in such matters – though oodles of cash never hurt – had seen enough to be convinced. Hindmarsh, however, would be trusted with the opening stint.

The race began under glowering skies and on a slick track that played to the hefty, sturdy, long-wheelbase, long-legged Lagonda’s strengths and Hindmarsh was able to mix it with all of the Alfas bar that of Raymond Sommer. News that the latter’s co-driver was too ill to compete caused the pack to ignore this runaway. Sure enough, the race’s fastest man – twice a winner – called it quits, exhausted, after fuel-feed problems cost him his lead before halfway.

Fontés held his end up and the Lagonda was still in the mix when the race was blown wide open as dawn approached. In quick succession: Philippe Veyron’s 5-litre supercharged Bugatti Type 50 lunched its back axle, as did twice winner Luigi Chinetti’s Alfa; and then Earl Howe’s leading Alfa holed a piston. Suddenly a Lagonda 1-2 – the second M45 was being shared by 1927 winner for Bentley (and the car’s owner) Dr Dudley Benjafield and Sir Roland Gunter – looked a distinct possibility. The fly in that ointment was the remaining Alfa being co-driven by Heldé – real name Pierre Louis-Dreyfus – and fellow Frenchman Henri Stoffel, a veteran who had finished second for Lorraine-Dietrich as long ago as 1924.

The weather closed in again and this match was even – to the extent that the Lagonda’s advantage after 169 laps in 18 hours was just 87 seconds. A 7-minute stop for Stoffel to cure a misfire (new plugs) and a water leak put the Lagondas back in the box seat – only for Benjafield to suffer gearbox problems that would cause it to have to thereafter rumble round in top and finish 13th. Its sister car was ailing, too, Fontés pitting at least twice to discuss zeroing oil pressure.

These unplanned stops, however, threw their rivals into confusion – though not so the fabulous Mr Fox – and Louis-Dreyfus thought he was overtaking for the lead in the closing stages when in fact he was merely regaining the lead lap. Said to be running on sump fumes, the Lagonda won by 5.26miles in 1868.42 having averaged 77.85mph. It’s galling that so worthy a performance is so often overlooked – and chilling that it’s a conundrum stained by tragedy.

The unanticipated control and judgment Fontés had exhibited on the track – his breakthrough season also included finishing second at Phoenix Park and winning in Limerick aboard his Alfa – deserted him on the road when in October, driving drunk, he killed a motorcyclist in a head-on collision near Coleshill in Warwickshire. He was sentenced to three years and banned from driving for 10. Upon his early release in March 1938, he would race aeroplanes and hydroplanes rather than cars.

Though Hindmarsh would drive a Fox & Nicholl Lagonda LG45 at Le Mans in 1937 – retiring early because of engine trouble – the increasing threat of war kept him in the air more and more. He was killed in an unexplained accident while flying a Hawker Hurricane above Brooklands on 6 September 1938. He was not yet 31.

Fontés was 27 and a pilot for the Air Transport Auxiliary when he was killed while circling RAF Llandow in a Vickers Wellington on 12 October 1940. Some reports say an engine failed, others that he clipped a telegraph post.

The ‘luckless’ Louis-Dreyfus on the other hand lived to be 102, having fought for the Résistance, escaped to England via Spain, Lisbon and Ireland, and flown more than 80 missions as a gunner with the RAF’s Free French bomber squadron.