![Lady in Racing]()
The lady you see smiling from the seat of her car is
Violette Cordery – or Violet for short. The car is a 1926 Invicta and it was this marque with which she was closely associated. Her eldest sister, Lucy, was married to
Noel Macklin who founded The Invicta Motor Co. After Macklin was wounded in WW1 he employed Violet as his driver and that started a long and successful period of motor sport for our venturesome flapper where she set records behind the wheel of Invictas. In 1920, she entered the South Harting Hill Climb driving a
Silver Hawk built by Macklin and it is thought she used this car to win the 1921 Junior Car Club race averaging 49.7 mph.
This picture shows her at Brooklands in a GN in the early 1920s where she also raced an Eric Campbell.
In 1926, one year after the launch of the Invicta brand, Cordery led a team of six drivers around Italy's Monza circuit for 10,000 miles at an average speed of 56.47mph. The crew drove a 3-litre Invicta to that record before taking the 15,000 mile record at an average speed of 55.76mph. Later that year, the same car saw Cordery granted the nickname 'The Long Distance Lady' after she piloted it round the Montlhéry track for 5,000 miles averaging 70.7mph in a record attempt supervised by the RAC. In honour of her record-breaking attempts, Violet Cordery became the first female beneficiary of the RAC's
Dewar Trophy, which celebrated the highest motoring achievement of the year.
More impressive still, in 1927 Cordery - accompanied by a mechanic, a nurse, and an RAC observer -
drove around the world. The team covered 10,266 miles in five months, travelling at an average speed of 24.6mph through Europe, Africa, India, Australia, the United States, and Canada. After their return, Macklin enlarged the engine to 4.5 litres and Cordery embarked on a record breaking attempt at Brooklands.
She and her sister Evelyn covered 30,000 miles in 30,000 minutes at an average of 61.57mph (earning her a second Dewar Trophy). Not satisfied with her list of records, Cordery tested her Invictas to near destruction, highlighting their build quality in the process. By 1930, she had driven a 4.5-litre Invicta tourer from London to Monte Carlo and back, at an average speed of 25.6mph. Oh, and she was in third gear all the way. Next up was London to John O'Groats and back in second gear, completed at an average 19.8mph. Finally, Cordery drove her Invicta from London to Edinburgh and back, stuck in first gear, at an average 12.5mph.
Only the circuit officials were able to stop Violet from attempting 25 miles of Brooklands in reverse, as they thought it would be too tough on the car. Instead, she proved the car's worth by completing fifty laps of the RAC's Traffic Route in top gear, at an average speed of 11.9mph. In 1931 Violet married
John Stuart Hindmarsh, a racing driver and aviator. They had two daughters, of whom Susan married racing driver
Roy Salvadori. Hindmarsh won Le Mans in 1935 and Salvadori won in 1959.
(Text Robin Batchelor, picture courtesy flashbak.com)
