After last night’s FIA WEC/ ELMS festivities there was an hour or so to kill for the DSC Ed, DSC Euro Ed and David ‘Doris’ Downes on the Champs d’Elysees this morning before the Eurostar home.
Home of France’s most famous (and overpriced) shopping street, and a quite enormous, and gloriously tacky, Christmas market, the infamous boulevard has seen plenty of sportscar related action down through the years with several victorious Le Mans winning teams choosing to parade their car and drivers in front of the highly appropriately monikered Arc de Triomphe.
None of that today of course though there was evidently a classic car run of sorts underway with hordes of Morgans, and a smattering of other British classic cars making their way by, and attracting plenty of attention.
One aspect of the Parisian experience that we’d like to see elsewhere is the habit of the major manufacturers who have showrooms on the street to display their latest concept cars and some classics too rather than ramming the showroom full of new metal.
With the FIA Gala in town this weekend too Toyota’s showroom was all about their hybrid credentials, with some excellent and innovative ways of showing off their latest tech and a highly welcome TS030 show car taking pride of place amongst its road going brethren.
Citroen meanwhile have an unusual showroom that may not be blessed with much floorspace, but that which it has extends upwards for 4 storeys, and down into the basement too.
I was hoping to show Doris the car that was featured here the last time I visited the French capital, the stunning lengthened SM Presidential car but that car wasn’t on display this time.
Each floor features a single car from a selection of new cars for sale, a trio of stunning Citroen classics, including this mint 1961 DS and a very, very rare DS Coupe Rally car, Bjorn Waldergaard’s name on the side.
The basement meanwhile had an altogether more recent Citroen rally car, the DS3 and the ground floor was showing off their all electric racing concept from 2010 the Survolt.
Renault’s showroom across the road had its floors packed with a variety of the latest concepts from Le Regie but the highlight of our happy hour was definitely provided by Mercedes Benz.
The showroom was packed with their racing efforts in recent years with an F1 show car, a McLaren Mercedes 722 GT race car (built by RML), a recent DTM car and, the absolute highlight, a truly authentic 24 Hour race winning car, this the Black Falcon AMG SLS GT3 car that won the 2012 Dunlop Dubai 24 Hours in the hands of Jeroen Bleekemolen, Thomas Jager & Khaled al Qubaisi. The car clearly not been touched since, race dirty, battle scarred but a thing of near animal beauty.
That makes it special enough but the point that seals the deal is the identity of the fourth victorious driver, The 2012 race saw the first of what would eventually become three international 24 Hour race wins for Sean Edwards, by now Sean should be preparing for Christmas with a Porsche Supercup title, 2 x 24 Hour race wins and, we believe, a Porsche factory GT contract in his pocket.
That was not to be, and seeing his car, on the weekend of what would have been his 27th birthday brought it home once again what a talent we’ve lost. Happy Birthday Sean, Make sure Simonsen gets them in tonight up there!
