Details
FERNAND GABRIEL
Paris-Madrid Motor Race 1903 - A gold medal awarded to the winning driver; embossed relief design depicting an early chain-drive Mors racing car to front, engraved and inscribed "Course Paris-Madrid: Paris Bordeaux: Gabriel 1er en 5hr 12'; having to reverse a relief design depicting a rising sun with applied laurel leaf branch above: similarly engraved and inscribed to reverse "Hommage de la Motricine - Societe Industrielle Francaise des Petroles" The medal is suspended on a heavy contemporaneous gold and white-gold watch-chain (which has also been worn by the driver's daughter & grand-daughter as a necklace pendant) and is contained in a period velvet-lined leather case
Paris-Madrid Motor Race 1903 - A gold medal awarded to the winning driver; embossed relief design depicting an early chain-drive Mors racing car to front, engraved and inscribed "Course Paris-Madrid: Paris Bordeaux: Gabriel 1er en 5hr 12'; having to reverse a relief design depicting a rising sun with applied laurel leaf branch above: similarly engraved and inscribed to reverse "Hommage de la Motricine - Societe Industrielle Francaise des Petroles" The medal is suspended on a heavy contemporaneous gold and white-gold watch-chain (which has also been worn by the driver's daughter & grand-daughter as a necklace pendant) and is contained in a period velvet-lined leather case
Special notice
No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis
Further details
It is exactly 100 years since this now legendary and indeed notorious Paris-Madrid motor race took place. It required skill and bravery to drive such early motor cars at speeds in excess of 100kph on roads that were mostly rough, potholed, dusty tracks. The only surfaces available on which to run such machines were the main arterial roads of Europe, previously mostly used by horse-drawn transport. The inter-city races for the relatively new-fangled automobiles attracted huge crowds, who lined the roadsides and were impossible to police, especially away from built-up areas. The resulting fatalities to both spectators and competing drivers in the running of this event caused it to be abandoned at Bordeaux, where the leading car, the 70hp Mors driven by the fearless Fernand Gabriel, was adjudged the winner having covered the 550 kilometres in just over 5 hours. Following this event, road-racing received much more severe control and led initially to closed public-roads and thereafter to the fabrication of purpose-built racing circuits around the world.