A Bonneville Dream: The Matra MS640

Some of you may remember when I shared about the Renault Etoile Filante (Shooting Star) returning to Bonneville in 2016, exactly 60 years after its debut there (Renault even made a few cool teaser clips for it that I recently found here and here). It just goes to show how crazy the French are about motor racing, and that got me thinking… What historic French race car would I love to see on the salt flats of Bonneville? Something that looks badass, sounds bad ass, and of course would go like hell. The choice for me is a no-brainer: The Matra MS640. A racing car built specifically to take on the wicked Porsche 917 for the 1969 running of Le Mans, which was never to be. The MS640 had a sexy aerodynamic fiberglass body, all steel tube chassis, and a mid-mounted 3 liter V12 churning out 420 horsepower that was built to run the car up to a flat out 211 mph. Tragically the 640 crashed in testing just two months before her Le Mans debut, as it turns out that slippery shape tended to get airborne at speeds above 160 mph. That crash was the end of Matra’s more radical racing pursuits, and the small French company would pull out of racing all together just 5 years later.
Oh, what could have been… And how incredibly cool would it be to see that one and only Matra MS640 blazing down the long course at Bonneville? Did I mention that someone made a ‘continuation car’ from the original Matra blue prints and its going on sale in Paris next month? I can only hope the lucky buyer actually runs this car the way it was truly meant to be run… Wide open.