Marv’s Garage: Briggs Cunningham was an American badass.

 They built people differently back in the day. Briggs Cunningham was a Very F#&king Rich Bloke who enjoyed typical F#&king Rich Bloke hobbies like yachting, drinking expensive liquor, gold bar juggling, and racing cars.

The Le Mans 24-Hour was the gold-standard race every racer, manufacturer and team-owner wanted to win, especially in the post-war years. Cunningham had long dreamed of taking an American team to the French classic and lifting the trophy, and his early tilts at motorsport proved promising.

But it wasn’t until after he bought the first Ferrari in North America from his friend and Le Mans-winner Luigi Chinetti (the first Ferrari dealer), that ol’ Briggsypoo started actually planning a star-spangled assault on Le Mans. Chinetti said if Cunningham could enter 2 cars in the 1950 race and ensure they finished 24-hours later, then he’d get a start in ’51 as well.

Now, America wasn’t exactly awash with cutting-edge sports racing machinery in these austere post-war years (the Corvette was still 3 years away from existing as a sleek-but-slow 6-cylinder), so Cunningham showed up with a pair of Yankeedoodledandy 1950 331ci (5.4L) V8 Cadillacs. Because you need to be comfortable when endurance racing, but of course.

One was a conventional Series 61 coupe, but the other featured some of the ugliest bodywork this side of that Botched TV show. Briggs got aerodynamicist Howard Weinman to take it past the boffins at Grumman Aircraft, who had slicked it using their wind-tunnel, and the French took to it like a cat to water nicknaming it “Le Monstre” (you shouldn’t need Google to translate that). Despite ditching it into a sandbank within the first few laps, Briggs and Phil Walters brought Le Monstre home in 11th place, one spot behind the regular Cadillac (nicknamed Petit Petaud, or Little Clumsy) in 10th! It was considered an incredible success for a first tilt at the race.

Cunningham returned to Le Mans several more times with his own cars, dubbed C-1, C-2, and the Hemi-powered C4-R shown below. The C4 ended up being the most successful of Cunningham’s cars, taking 4th outright at Le Mans in ‘52, and first place in the Over 5L class.