Amédée Gordini

Biography

In 1934 Gordini approached Henri Pigozzi, Fiat's French "General Representative," a close friend and business partner of Fiat owner Giovanni Agnelli. Since 1928 Pigozzi had been assembling Fiats at Suresnes, France, using imported and locally sourced components. In November 1934 Pigozzi's Fiat assembly business relocated to larger premises at Nanterre, and out of this Simca was born. Gordini, already established as a racing driver and engineer with a specialist's understanding of Fiats, rapidly found himself head of the Simca motor racing department.

He quickly showed a flair for improving performance from the cars' basic Fiat-designed engines without massive expenditure, acquiring the sobriquet "le sorcier de la mécanique." He stayed with Simca till 1951. From the 1940s, his son Aldo joined his racing team as a mechanic and occasional driver. The break with Simca arose over the extent of the manufacturer's support for Simca-Gordini participation at the top level of motor racing, including Formula 1.

In 1952 Gordini founded the independent Gordini company to build a line of sports cars for racing. In 1953 the government of France awarded Amédée Gordini the Legion of Honor. The cars Gordini sent to Le Mans were very fast; his engine tuner, also called the "sorcerer," breathed Grand Prix performance into regular engines—a feat no one believed possible. The Musée National de l'Automobile de Mulhouse in Mulhouse, France, featuring the Schlumpf Collection, has in its collection Grand Prix and road racing cars of the Gordini brand, including a type 16 Grand Prix from 1954, a single seater type 32 from 1956, and the Gordini 26 S driven by French author Françoise Sagan.

Despite racing successes, after World War II obtaining adequate financial support became increasingly difficult, and the business struggled without the backing of Pigozzi. Timely salvation appeared in 1957 when Renault engaged Gordini. During the final two decades of his career his technical skills combined with the financial muscle of France's largest automaker to produce performance versions of mass market cars, starting with the Renault Dauphine and including the Renault Caravelle, Renault 5 Alpine Turbo, Renault 8, Renault 12, and the Renault 17.

In Brazil, technical changes in the Brazilian version of the Renault Dauphine, manufactured by Willys-Overland, caused the company to rename this car model in 1962, releasing it with the popular nickname Gordini. Gordini died after several months of acute illness at the end of May 1979 in Paris, less than a month short of his eightieth birthday. He was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery. He died a few weeks too early to be present for the first Formula 1 victory of the Renault V6 turbo racing engine, developed by the Renault Sport division into which he had merged his own company, and which he had built up since 1969.