Hirondelle in the wacky 1959 Blériot Race

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First there was this little article, then it took some years for a grand follow-up, followed by another least as good one not so much later. But don’t think everything has been said about the Swaab Special / HWZ Hirondelle. Rutger Booy remembered he’d read an article about the car when it tackled the wacky Blériot Race re-enactment of 1959 and promised to look it up and send it over.

Well, he did just that last week and what a great read it was. The 1959 Blériot Race was initiated by the Daily Mail to commemorate the major leap Louis Blériot made by crossing the channel in his monoplane aircraft in 1909. The British newspaper had challenged the Frenchman at the time to make the crossing (which cost them a thousand pounds). And they decided to set up a similar challenge 50 years later but now running from Marble Arch in central London to the Arc de Triomphe in central Paris. Prize money tenfolded in five decades time: 10,000 pounds no less.

Competitors were free to choose their own means of transport, as long as they did the channel crossing by plane. A Dutch crew of Hans Hugenholtz (senior) and Henk van Zalinge managed to find a Fokker S14 Jet Trainer (picture 1 below) available and willing to do the job from Northolt airport just outside London to Le Bourget airport just outside Paris. The cars they used were two Hirondelles. The one for the British 70kms stretch an ultra-streamlined Porsche powered Special (picture 2 below); the one used in France the car that we now know so well, and equipped with a three-cylinder tuned DKW powerhouse.

Remarkably, the pictures show the car with Dutch registration ‘PP-35-72’ which may have been a fake number? According to later owner Raymond van Bree the car had never been road registered before he did just that. And in order to get one it was a hell of a job to pass registration tests... Anyhow: you will wonder how the Dutch crew did, right? Well, they did awesome.

The flying Dutchmen started at 8.30:37 at Marble Arch, they arrived at Northolt airport at 8.43:30, flew off there at 8.44 sharp, landed at Le Bourget at 9.18:50, drove off in the other Hirondelle at 9.20:09 only to clock in at the Arc de Triomphe at 9.32:02 (picture 3 below). That’s one hour, one minute and 25 seconds to get from central London to central Paris – averaging 381.49kmh…! However, they didn’t win. Believe it or not but from the 168 competitors – among them holiday resort mogul Billy Butlin - they came home 26th. Winner was RAF squadron leader Maughan who needed an unbelievable 40 minutes and 44 seconds. Amazing, isn't it?
What a great article, but mostly: what a great race!

(Words Jeroen Booij, pictures Het Automobiel via Rutger Booy)

   

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