1948 Simca-Gordini

I took this photograph on a visit to the Donington Park Museum in May 1989.

It's a 1948 Simca-Gordini with a four cylinder inline 1,098cc Simca engine and the book 'Great Racing Cars of the Donington Collection' says this about it:

'The Simca-Gordini

French Sorcery

Amédée Gordini was a French-domiciled, Italian-born engineer who raced pre-war with tuned French Fiats – then sold under the name of Simca. In 1945-46 ‘The Sorcerer’, as he was to become known, built his first true single-seater racing car. He used a Fiat-Simca Ballila transverse leaf front suspension, a narrow tube-frame, and standard back axle and rear suspension. Second time out, at the Marseilles Prado circuit, Gordini won in this car, and in 1947 he laid down three modified Simca-Gordini single-seater Voiturettes. With Prince ‘Bira’, Jean-Pierre Wimille and Maurice Trintignant as drivers, Simca-Gordini proved very successful. For 1948 the Patron wanted to build an ambitious v8 engine, but Simca vetoed the idea and he had to make do with 1430cc de-siamesed port versions of the existing production units. In 1949 when poor Wimille was killed in a 1430cc car while practicing in Buenos Aires, the Simca-Gordinis were stretched to 1490cc in which form they produced 115bhp. This made these lightweight, simple cars quite potent performers, and with newcomer Juan Manuel Fangio behind the wheel more success was achieved. For 1950 a Wade supercharger was adopted but in 1951 a break came with Simca and thereafter the Sorcerer’s shoe-string budget yielded straightforward Gordini cars which raced widely in Formula 2 and, eventually, in six-and eight-cylinder form, in 2½-litre Formula 1 – all with steadily declining success. When Gordini finally went under in 1957, Le Sorcier himself became a performance consultant to Renault, but his cars were the last serious wearers of the French Blue in Grand Prix racing until the advent of the Matra in 1986.'