Could 1936 world record run still stand?

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It’s only recently that we heard the story of Frenchman François Lecot, who motored 400,000 kilometres in his Citroën 11CV in just a year's time, averaging some 1,100 kms per day in the mid-1930s. Although it ends rather sad, this is a lovely story, which we like to share with you here.

Lecot (picture 2) was a motoring man from the very start. He ran Bugatti and Diatto dealerships (picture 3 and 4) in his native Lyon in the 1920s and could be seen behind the wheels of these cars in races and rallies regularly. The idea to drive the insane record run came when a befriended Ford dealer told him his plans to prove the reliability of the A model by organizing the ‘Raid du Galibier’ – a 453 kilometers long drive from Lyons to Grenoble over several passes and via Chambery back to Lyons – and that for fifteen consecutive days. Lecot liked this plan and soon started setting up similar drives. He took a tiny little Rosengart 5CV to a 100,000 kilometres drive in 1930, and with success.

When he heard of Citroën’s plans with a new front wheel driven model in 1934 it was nothing more thean logical that a grand adventure with the then brand new Traction Avant was on its way. Lecot used an 11CV (or 7CV? - see comments) variant to drive a string of ‘raids’ in order to prove the car’s reliability, taking him to everywhere in France and Belgium (picture 5) but also to Tunis and Moscow.

But his piece de resistance was to travel his beloved Citroën for 400,000 in just a year’s time. Lecot prepared the car himself and added an extra petrol tank of 65 liters to limit refueling. He plans to drive it from Lyon to Paris and back for two days, and then Lyon-Monaco every third day and that day after day, week after week, month after month. A controller of the Automobile Club de France controlled him on his daily drives.

Lecot and his trusty Citroën started in late July 1935 and made the 400,000 kms without noteworthy trouble when July 1936 came to an end. The Frenchman is celebrated when he and his beloved car make it to the headquarter of the Automobile Club de France in Paris on July 26th 1936, only to visit the Lyon branche the next day (main picture). And if he hadn’t driven enough he then started a comprehensive tour throughout France to visit all the Citroen dealers who’d helped him on his tours. But the festivities do not hold too long, as Lecots son dies that same summer in a flight accident, while they were working together on a book about the record run. This book, titled ‘My 400,000 kilometers’, is published a year later never the less with another co-author. But Lecot fades in obscurity shortly after his record run. Financially ruined, he dies in 1959 as a milk delivery man.

Now. We may well be proven wrong, but have an idea that Lecot’s 1936 world record could still have been unbeaten to this day, or have there really been other men as crazy to tackle this most unusual record run?

(Words Jeroen Booij, photographs Citroennet, Auto Satisfaction, Pinterest)

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