The response to the quiz #426 was heartwarming and most of you knew it was a Grégoire. Many of you could also tell in extenso about the Rally de Saint-Sébastien in which it took part. So congratulations to Thierry, Fedor, Hunault, Gerd, Olivier, Kevin, Craig, David and Frank for your correct identification of the Grégoire. However, winning is in the details and in this case the most correct and elaborate answer was given by Kevin Atkinson:
“Grégoire recognised the formula for the San Sebastian rally (September 1912) rewarded heavy loads and long distances so sent their vehicle to Posen in Poland (although others started as far afield as Russia). The car, complete with its caravan body was nicknamed La Menagerie Grégoire, and weighed around 3 tons- as a result the chassis was strengthened. The engine was 79mm x 150mm. Its load included the experienced rally driver Jean Porporato, Mr Picard (the Berlin agent for Grégoire) and his wife, plus 8 more people, chimney pots, flower pots and a bird cage. After a journey of some 1470 miles over 7 days (at 25mph!) they won the event with a score of 144.9 points- easily beating an Hispano-Suiza to second place (116.6 points). ...”
Two small remarks. First, two of you mentioned the Grégoire winning the Concours d'Elégance (also mentioned in Le Sport Universel Illustré!), but I do not believe that is true. The Concours for closed cars was won by Repusseau with his Delage. Second, the Grégoire won Class A for the non-russian drivers. Class B for russian drivers, starting from St. Petersburg, was won by Aschoff on a Métallurgique, having scored more points than the Gégoire. However, due to a change of rules after the departure of the russian participants, the jury decided that there wouldn't be an overall winner.
In our case we have, so congrats Kevin with your third win, which comes with our offer to become a jury member. We would like to invite you to come up with next weeks quiz. The procedure for obtaining your T-shirt will probably be familiar to you!