Jean-Marie Corre

Jean-Marie Corre

Jean-Marie Corre (1898)
To person
Date of birth	May 21, 1864
date of death	September 18, 1915
nation	France
discipline	Street
Last updated: April 10, 2016

Jean-Marie Corre (born May 21, 1864 in Trémel , † September 18, 1915 in Guingamp ) was a French entrepreneur and cyclist .

Athletic career

Until the age of 23, Jean-Marie Corre worked in the metallurgical industry . As a hobby, he built a bicycle out of wood with which he took trips. 1889, at the age of 25, he began in earnest with the cycling and drove regional races, such as on the cycling track of Pontrieux . He was 1.62 meters tall and weighed 62 kilograms during his active time; he had a reputation for being stubborn “like a Breton” as he often did not listen to the advice of those around him and therefore lost races.

From September 6th to 8th, 1892 Corre drove a route shortened to 1,000 kilometers in the Paris – Brest – Paris race , which had been driven out the previous year and won by Charles Terront . Terront then accused Corre of riding with illegal assistance, and the two men got into a public argument. Corre then demanded Terront "to duel" in the form of a race, Terront could "choose the weapons". After long discussions and negotiations - Terront demanded a distance of 1000 kilometers and 5000 francs entry fee - there was a match between the two of them from February 24th to 26th, 1893 , which Terront won. Corre, in turn, became a “ star ” in Paris , and he opened a bicycle shop there. In the same year he finished third in the third edition of Bordeaux-Paris .

In 1894 Jean-Marie Corre became a member of the Club de Levallois-Perret , in which the prominent driver and French stay-up champion Lucien Lesna was a member; the following year he started his own bicycle production. On January 6th and 7th, 1894, Corre and driver Auguste Stéphane fought a 1000-kilometer match at the Vélodrome d'Hiver in Paris, which his opponent won with a time of 39 hours, 28 minutes and eight seconds. The race, for which Corre had been prepared by Henri Desgrange , was not "particularly interesting", according to the Dutch magazine De Kampioen , as it was clear from the start that Stéphane was the stronger driver of the two. In December 1894 he took part in a four-way fight against Mathieu Chevreuil, Charles Meyer and Gaston Rivierre over 1000 kilometers, which Rivierre won.

Corre on a motorized tricycle Fouillaron-De Dion in the pacemaker criterion Paris-Bordeaux , which he won in the easy class.

Corre then decided to complete a personal tour of France over 5100 kilometers, following the example of Théodore Joyeux , who had embarked on such a tour in May 1895. From September Corre drove 200 kilometers on 25 days each, most of the time with a pacemaker ; in many cities he was enthusiastically received. These two individual trips ultimately gave Géo Lefebvre the idea of ​​proposing such a stage trip through France as competition to Desgrange - the Tour de France . In 1895 he finished second at Bordeaux – Paris and in the same year took part in a trip from Moscow to Saint Petersburg , which was canceled due to heavy rain. In order not to have made the trip in vain, Corre decided to tackle the record of his old rival Terront over the route from Saint Petersburg to Paris, which he successfully achieved. In 1897 he ended his cycling career after setting a 24-hour record of 671 kilometers and 963 meters without a pacemaker on the Rouen Velodrome. He told a journalist that he felt exhausted.

Career as an entrepreneur

A Corre automobile from 1904

In the following two years, Jean-Marie Corre successfully took part in competitions on motorcycles and motorized tricycles . At the same time he expanded his activities in the construction and sale of bicycles. From 1899 he sold a small car with a body from Renault and an engine from De Dion-Bouton . In 1900 he drove a small single-cylinder Fouillaron car with a de Dion-Bouton engine on the Paris- Toulouse- Paris route. Corre couldn't finish the drive, but did believe that gasoline-powered vehicles were the future.

In 1901 Corre founded the Société française des Automobiles Corre in Levallois-Perret , an early center of French automobile manufacture, which produced three- and four-wheelers with motors. To make the brand known, he took part in reliability drives, initially with little success until he achieved his first victory at the Circuit des Ardennes in 1902 : his small car had mastered the 512 kilometer test at an average speed of 53.5 kilometers per hour , and the following year, his cars sold well for the first time: between 1901 and 1906, 1,100 small cars were produced. Since his models were too similar to Renault's , he was sued and lost the case. Therefore, Corre had to sell its brand to the Lestienne family in 1907 for economic reasons . She named the brand in Corre-La Licorne ; the unicorn was part of the family crest and has now also become part of the company emblem. The company existed until 1949 and produced around 30,000 vehicles.

Corre settled in Rueil and produced small motorized cars in its own workshop until 1913 under the brand names Corre, JC or Le Cor . Then he retired to his home region and dealt with agricultural engineering . He died at the age of 51.

Web links

Commons : Jean-Marie Corre  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Jean-Marie Corre in the Radsportseiten.net database
• Jean-Marie Corre, premier cycliste breton ... In: Ligue Nationale de Cyclisme. Retrieved April 15, 2016 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j} Jean-Marie Corre. In: Le petit braquet. Retrieved April 12, 2016 . 
2. ↑ De Kampioen. from Jan. 12, 1894, p. 25 ( limited preview in Google book search).
3. ^ Automobile Corre-La Licorne. In: corre-lalicorne.com. September 18, 1915, accessed April 12, 2016 .