Auguste Veuillet

The first Porsche Le Mans racing car. The number 46 356/4 SL Coupe was driven by Auguste Veuillet and Edmond Mouche in 1951 . The two French achieved 20th place in the overall standings and won the racing class for vehicles up to 1.1 liter displacement.

Auguste Veuillet (born July 3, 1910 in Lyon , † October 10, 1980 in Paris ) was a French racing car driver and entrepreneur.

Porsche and Yamaha importer

In 1947, two years after the end of World War II , Veuillet founded the Sonauto company in Paris and began importing luxury vehicles to France. After a meeting and agreement with Ferdinand Porsche at the Paris Motor Show in 1950, Veuillet's company became the first French Porsche importer.

In 1964 Sonauto entered the motorcycle market and signed a contract with Yamaha . The development of the dealer network was entrusted to the young Jean-Claude Olivier . Jean-Claude-Olivier, the son of Veuillet's fellow racing driver and friend Gonzague Olivier , was a successful motorcycle racer in the 1980s and President of Yamaha Motor France from 1992 to 2010 .

Veuillet remained in the management of Sonauto until his death in 1976.

Career in motorsport

A few weeks after the end of the war, the first motorsport events took place again in Europe and Veuillet was one of the first drivers to take part. In September 1945 he went to the Liberation Cup , an event in the Bois de Boulogne near Paris in which both monoposto and sports cars were allowed to start. The race was won by Henri Louveau on a Maserati 6CM ; Veuillet on his MG K3 Magnette came second. This was followed by more missions with MG and another second place at the Robert Macaud Cup in 1946 ; this time behind Eugène Martin in the BMW 328 .

In 1948 he finished sixth in the Spa-Francorchamps 24-hour race and in 1949 contested his first Le Mans 24-hour race .

Veuillet was the first Porsche to start at Le Mans. The mood in the French public towards everything that came from Germany was still very high five years after the end of the war. So nobody at Porsche thought of a factory participation in the race in 1951. The founder and race director of the Le Mans race, Charles Faroux , broke through this resentment when the Veuillet made the start with a Porsche palatable, which was then set up and reported by Porsche KG . In 1951 Veuillet entered the race with his friend Edmond Mouche in a 356/4 SL Coupe , finished 20th in the overall standings and won his racing class. A year later , the two French won their class again and this time came eleventh in the overall standings.

His greatest success as a driver was the success at the 1955 Bol d'Or with Gonzague Olivier as a partner in the Porsche 550 . His last racing appearance was at the 3-hour race in Rouen in 1958 , where he finished sixth.

Veuillet also ran a successful racing team for more than two decades and was thus entered in many sports car races in the 1960s and 1970s.

statistics

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1949	Auguste Veuillet	Delage Type D 6-3 liters	Edmond Mouche	failure	Engine failure
1951	Porsche KG	Porsche 356/4 SL Coupe	Edmond Mouche	Rank 20 and class win
1952	Porsche KG	Porsche 356/4	Edmond Mouche	11th place and class win
1953	Porsche KG	Porsche 356	Petermax Müller	failure	Engine failure
1955	Porsche KG	Porsche 550/4 Spyder	Zora Arkus-Duntov	Rank 13

Individual results in the sports car world championship

season	team	race car	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th
1953	Porsche	Porsche 356	SEB	MIM	LEM	SPA	ONLY	RTT	CAP
					DNF
1955	Porsche	Porsche 550	BUA	SEB	MIM	LEM	RTT	TAR
						13

literature

• Christian Moity, Jean-Marc Teissèdre, Alain Bienvenu: 24 heures du Mans, 1923–1992. Éditions d'Art, Besançon 1992, ISBN 2-909-413-06-3 .

Web links

Commons : Auguste Veuillet  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Information about Auguste Veuillet (French)
• Official website of Sonauto
• Auguste Veuillet at Racing Sports Cars
• AugusteVeuillet at Chicane F1

Individual evidence

1. ^ Liberation Cup 1945
2. ↑ Robert Macaud Cup 1946
3. ↑ Bol d'Or 1955
4. ↑ 1958 3-hour race in Rouen