A Nice-Grasse motor race in 1899

At the turn of the 20th century, Nice was a centre of interest for the earliest motoring enthusiasts. Some of them were ‘hivernants’ (‘winterers’) who came to the Cote d’Azur to get away from the winter cold in northern Europe. All of them were wealthy.

In March1899, the Automobile Club de Nice in conjunction with a magazine named ‘La France Automobile’ organized a ‘Nice Week’. Among the events of the week was a ‘touring motor race’ from Nice to Magagnosc, in the commune of Grasse, and back.

The race started outside the ‘Hotel des Anglais’ on the Promenade des Anglais.

Hotel des Anglais, Nice (public domain)

That hotel was demolished in 1913, but its site is easily identified today because it is now occupied by the Meridien Hotel. The route is described as running via Colomars and Tourette sur Loup to Magagnosc before returning to Nice. Records of the race state that the total distance was 85km.

Today, if you go to Magagnosc on that route from Nice and return the same way, the distance would be 112km, but when I inserted a route from the Promenade des Anglais to Colomars, Tourette and Magagnosc into Google Maps and then specified the shortest route to return to Nice, I obtained the map below:

Map source: Google Maps

Obviously, I have excluded modern autoroutes. Such a complete circuit very neatly comes out as 86km so it seems quite plausible that this was the route used.

Race start in Nice. Two-seater and four-seater (top) and tricycles (bottom) (public domain)

I have been unable to trace any photographs of the race in Magagnosc, but the archives of Mercedes-Benz do contain images of the race in Nice. There were three separate classes: tricycles (with just the rider), two-seater cars and four-seater cars, and it appears that all of the seats had to be occupied during the race. No doubt this accounts for the four-seaters being slower than the two-seaters, but I can find no records about the speed of the tricycles.

The overall winner, in a two-seater Daimler ‘Phoenix 12hp’ was Wilhelm Bauer, who worked as a foreman at the Daimler factory and doubled up as a professional driver.

The race winner, a two-seater Daimler Phoenix 12hp driven by Wilhelm Bauer (Mercedes Benz archives)

A similar car finished second, followed by another two-seater known as a Béridot & Petit. However, that was actually slower than the winner of the four-seater class, another Daimler Phoenix 12hp driven by Hermann Braun, so I think it was actually a clean sweep for Daimler.

This photo is actually from 1901, when cars had improved significantly from 1899, but it gives some idea of the road conditions encountered by Wilhelm Bauer (public domain)

The winner’s time was 2 hours 27 minutes which, if the 85km distance is accurate, equates to an average speed of 35kph. Not bad for an underpowered vehicle on poorly surfaced roads over the twisting routes of the hill country of our arrière-pays!

A later edition of Nice Week, in 1901, led to the genesis of Mercedes-Benz vehicles, because Daimler’s largest dealer, Emil Jellinek, entered cars which he had commissioned from them under the name of his daughter, Mercedes. To great acclaim, they won both a sprint race up the hill to La Turbie and a much longer distance race than in 1899, to Salon-de-Provence and back. Daimler eventually adopted Mercedes-Benz as their brand name for cars.