Car to remember

More than 20 years had passed since the previous all-French victory at Le Mans, that of Jean-Louis Rosier and (mostly) father Louis in a Talbot-Lago, but Matra was on a mission. It had built a number of sports-prototypes since the late 1960s, but the MS670 would be the series’ apotheosis.

“No effort was spared,” says Henri Pescarolo, who shared the winning MS670 with Graham Hill in 1972, then its successful B derivative with Gérard Larrousse in 1973-74. “Matra was determined to secure a French win and put its very best engineers on the project, which is probably why its F1 results weren’t as good as they might otherwise have been.”