Maurice Gatsonides

Maurice Gatsonides 1964

Gatsonides (left) at the 1963 Tulpne Rally

The Gatso 1500

Maurice "Mouse" Gatsonides (born February 14, 1911 in Gombong , † November 29, 1998 in Heemstede ) was a Dutch pilot , entrepreneur and racing driver .

Youth and the time before World War II

Gatsonide's father was a Dutch diplomat and vice governor in the Dutch East Indies , now Indonesia, in the 1910s . Maurice Gatsonides was born in 1911 in a town in the Jawa Tengah province . During the First World War , his parents returned to the Netherlands, where he received his school education. After finishing school, he completed training as a commercial pilot at KLM . He carried out this activity until 1935, when he opened an automobile dealership in Haarlem .

Entrepreneur and automobile designer

His first entrepreneurial activities during World War II were already profitable. He developed a charcoal- fired gas generator and built it in large numbers. During the occupation of the Netherlands by the Wehrmacht there was next to no fuel for the civilian population. Gatsonides' generator was very popular and was also used by the Dutch resistance in order to be able to move vehicles at all.

After the end of the war, he began building automobiles in his workshop in Heemstede. He made his first attempt in 1939, just before the outbreak of war. This car, the Kwik , was based on Ford technology, precisely on the first V8 - Mercury that came to the Netherlands. Kwik is the Dutch translation of Mercury or quicksilver. The car had a cabriolet body that was made by the coach and body builder Schutter & Van Bakel and driven by Gatsonides in rallies. In order to protect the car and a Hillman Minx , acquired for further rally purposes, from the rigors of war, he buried both cars in the garden of his house. Above all, the Kwik survived, which Gatsonides had to sell in 1950 and which passed through several collectors' hands, but was bought again by his son for the family in 2005 and is still driven today.

The second work was a vehicle called the Gatso , which was originally called Gatford. Since this name was too close to the brand name of the French Ford partner company Matford , there was an objection from there, with the threat of legal action. Then the name of the car was quickly changed. The Gatso 4000 was presented at the Geneva Motor Show in 1948 and series production was announced, but it never came about. Ultimately, according to various sources, a maximum of eleven were built. Special features of the prototype were the third headlight on the front and the removable glass roof.

One last attempt to set up automobile production was the Gatso 1500 , a shapely convertible based on the Fiat 1500 . The car remained a one-off and is still fully restored today. Since the financial means were exhausted, Gatsonides had to give up in 1949.

In contrast to automobile production, another project achieved commercial success and financial prosperity. In 1958 he developed a camera for speed monitoring , which has been continuously improved over the years. Today the Gatso company has 45,000 installations in 60 countries.

The racer

Gatsonides began to drive motorsport as an active driver as early as the 1930s. His first race was the Monte Carlo Rally in 1936 on his Hillman Minx. The best result before the Second World War was fourth place overall in the Liège – Rome – Liège long-distance journey in 1937. With the Kwik he drove a circuit race in Zandvoort in 1939 . In August of the same year he competed in the race from Liège to Rome and back again. At first he was in the top field for a long time, but then he chose the wrong route and only crossed the finish line in 14th.

After the war, the Dutchman took up racing again and primarily competed in rallies and hill climbs. Until the 1960s he was a regular participant in the Monte Carlo Rally on various vehicles , with the climax of the overall victory in 1953 on a Ford Zephyr .

From 1950, circuit racing became more and more interesting. In this year he went for the first time in the 24-hour race at Le Mans at the start. The message for use, unusual in motorsport in the early 1950s, came from Czechoslovakia . The actual aircraft manufacturing company Rudy Letov announced an Aero Minor 750 for Gatsonides and his compatriot Henk Hoogeveen . The team covered 184 laps and finished in 21st place in the overall standings, which was synonymous with victory in the class for sports cars up to 0.75 liter displacement. After a failure in 1952 of the year ended 24-hour race in western France in 1953 with his British partner Johnny Lockett on a plant - Austin-Healey 100 in the 12th position overall.

Once he also drove a Ferrari in a sports car race. With his possession of the director Roberto Rossellini located Ferrari 212 Inter , he secured the 1000 km race at the Nurburgring in 1953 to ninth place overall. In addition to the eleventh final place in Le Mans a year later, this was the best placing of his career in an international sports car race. After the Tour de France for automobiles in 1958 , he announced his retirement as an active driver.

statistics

Le Mans results

year	team	vehicle	Teammate	placement	Failure reason
1950	Rudy Letov Letnany	Aero Minor 750	Henk Hoogeveen	Rank 21 and class win
1952	Maurice Gatsonides	Jowett Jupiter R1	Hugo van Zuylen Nijeveldt	failure	Engine failure
1953	Donald Healey Motor Company	Austin-Healey 100	Johnny Lockett	Rank 12
1954	Automobiles Frazer Nash Ltd.	Frazer Nash Le Mans Coupe	Marcel Becquart	Rank 11

Individual results in the sports car world championship

season	team	race car	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th
1953	Donald Healey Motor Company Roberto Rossellini	Austin-Healey 100 Ferrari 212 Inter	SEB	MIM	LEM	SPA	ONLY	RTT	CAP
					12		9
1954	Frazer Nash	Triumph TR2 Frazer Nash Le Mans	BUA	SEB	MIM	LEM	RTT	CAP
					27	11

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 : Maurice Gatsonides  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Maurice Gatsonides at Racing Sports Cars
• Information on Maurice Gatsonides
• Maurice Gatsonides and the Kwik
• Gatso's website

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Information on the Kwik
2. ↑ The Kwik
3. ↑ The Kiwi Today ( Memento from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Gatso 4000
5. ↑ On the history of Gatso cameras ( Memento from December 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive )