My story begins in the early 1960's when I was a bored schoolboy wandering around a badly lit basement under a shopping centre in Pretoria, South Africa looking for a safe place to have an illegal cigarette. There were all kinds of cars parked there, including an unusually squat one lurking under a dusty piece of canvas.

I drew the cover aside and found a long narrow sports car with what looked to me like motorcycle mudguards over the wheels and motorcycle headlights on the bonnet. I climbed in and sat down on a tiny leather seat behind an enormous steering wheel. I soon got bored and got out again. Then I spotted a silver plaque about half the size of a pack of cigarettes on the front end of the bonnet just above the crude mesh grill. I wiped it clean. It stated that the car was the Talbot that won the 1950 Le Mans race. That didn't mean an awful lot to me, and so I finished my cigarette and got on with other things.

The other day I got curious again and decided to find out more about the car. I learned that it was driven to victory after covering 3,465 kilometers in 24 hours, meaning that the father and son team of Louis and Jean-Louis Rosier had maintained an average speed of 144 kilometers per hour in what was a fairly basic car by today's standards.

The Lago-Talbot Type T26 was a factory works racer provided with a 4.5 liter 260 horsepower straight eight engine that was conventionally aspirated through a side air intake known as a bazooka. The "bazooka" can be clearly seen in the illustration – the absence of the motorcycle mudguards in the picture suggests that "my" car was the wider bodied version with mudguards and headlights that was designed especially to comply with Le Mans standards, which would make it totally unique.

The Lago-Talbot Type T26SC-GS owes its victory to the vision of Anthony Lago who headed up the firm in those days. He was an engineer of the old school who believed in improving road car components by tweaking and testing them under the harsh conditions of motor car racing. Remember, in those days there were no computer simulation tools available and drivers simply tested the parts to failure.

Anthony Lago began his experiments in the late 1930's on an existing 3.0 liter six cylinder engine already in commercial use in Talbots since the beginning of the decade. At the end of the hostilities he was joined by a new designer named Carlo Marchetti, who helped produce the first 4.5 liter version of the six cylinder engine. There was more work to be done as the prototype only produced 165 hp, which was bumped up to 240bhp by introducing a number of innovative modifications, including shortening the pushrods by moving the lateral camshafts half way up the block.

Even when finally able to produce the required 260 hp, the Lago-Talbot was still no match for the Alfa-Romeo team. This time Anthony Lago and Carlo Marchetti turned their attention to the design of the car itself. They based this on the classic roadster design working back from the long bonnet to a more triangular shape to compensate for the high engine block, and then added transverse leaf springs and friction dampers up front to help maximize stability.

Although still slightly deficient in performance the Lago-Talbot had several design benefits that helped Louis and Jean-Louis Rosier drive it to victory in the 1950 Le Mans. These included better fuel consumption and longer legs due to the lack of supercharging and a more economic straight six cylinder engine compared to the competition's supercharged V8’s, plus legendary reliability. It won the 1950 La Mans because it stopped less frequently, as opposed to being the fastest car on the track.

The enduring contribution made by the Lago-Talbot Type T26SC-GS to automotive development was the balance struck between brute power and efficiency, and in this way Louis Rosier can also be regarded as the unintentional father of modern, environmentally conscious motoring.

By Richard Farrell

Richard has enjoyed a life's hobby of creating novels, film scripts and poetry, and has been more recently involved in web content, articles, blogs and more. He was educated in South Africa.

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