The roads of Argentina

The ford

Before San Juan, between Huaco and Guandacol, the loose earth lay as fine as talc, and by his own account Juan Manuel Fangio drove for two hours in first gear; the heat was unbearable. Coming down the Cuesta de Miranda he reached the river, stopped the coupé in the middle of the ford, and he and his co-driver, Héctor Tieri, got out, each by his own door, and jumped into the water.

It was late in 1939. He was 28, in his first long-distance road race as a driver, in a black Chevrolet that his town had bought him. He won the stage from Catamarca to San Juan, the first stage win of his life, and for the first time he led a Gran Premio. Looking at El Gráfico’s photograph of him then, he said later: “Look at the smile I’ve got in this El Gráfico photo: it’s for the first money I got for winning a stage, two hundred pesos!” (attributed)

The Turismo Carretera was the Automóvil Club Argentino’s category of marathon road races for near-standard coupés, run over dirt roads, mountain passes and deserts, by day and by night, with a mechanic riding beside the driver. By 1940 Ford and Chevrolet had driven the other makes out of it. It was on these roads that Fangio made his name.

A borrowed taxi

He had started three years earlier, at 25. With friends from the workshop in Balcarce he lightened the body of a blue 1929 Ford A taxi, No. 19, which belonged to the father of his friend Gilberto Bianculli, and took it to a race for standard cars at Benito Juárez on 25 October 1936, entered as Rivadavia after his football club. He had his reasons: “If we put a car on the track and it goes well, it means we’re good at what we do, and that will bring more customers to our workshop.” (attributed)

On the Saturday he was seventh fastest of 18. On the Sunday, over 25 laps of an 8.45 km (5¼-mile) circuit, the cars started in rows of four in thick dust. Before the end of the first lap Armando Tessone’s car overturned and someone in it was killed: the museum’s own pages disagree on whether it was Tessone or his co-driver, Juan Estayno. Fangio, with Bianculli beside him, was third when the oil ran out and a big-end bearing failed on lap 23. The prizes were later voided over illegal engines. The taxi had to go back to its owner in perfect condition: “He wanted to kill us … but in the end we gave it back repaired.” (attributed)

Seven weeks later, at Gonzales Chaves, in a borrowed 1930 Ford A, he was shut out of the final, and his two accounts of why differ. Two days afterwards he told El Liberal of Balcarce that he had been third in his heat, had left to repair the car at a workshop nearby and had been refused entry on his return, after the final had started; of the weather he said: “A violent storm began to blow, with heavy rain. The wind was so strong it pushed people from side to side.” Fifty years later his memoir said that an ignition fault had kept him up all night, that he had reached the circuit after the start and joined in a lap down, and that the organisers had been right: “What a disaster! … Of course, and quite rightly, they took me out of the classification. It was fair.”¹

In March 1937 came his only race in his home town, on La Chata, in a Buick straight-eight lent by Oscar Rezusta, with José Duffard beside him. At the start he snatched first gear so hard that the lever came off in his hand. He climbed out, opened the gearbox with a screwdriver, jammed the gears in third and set off last, and he was passing car after car when he hit a culvert hidden in the dust.

His first official race, sanctioned by the Automóvil Club, was at Necochea on 27 March 1938, in a Ford V8 special bought from José Cordonnier of Ayacucho with money lent by friends.² On the front row his little Ford sat between Carlos Arzani’s 3.8-⁠litre Alfa Romeo, still wearing its Scuderia Ferrari shield, and Hugo Abramor’s “Insignia de Oro”, a veteran of Indianapolis. At the flag Arzani’s wheels spun in a puddle and Abramor fluffed his clutch, and for the first few metres Fangio led. He was fifth in qualifying, third in his heat and seventh in the final, which Arzani won.

That October he rode in his first Gran Premio, the Gran Premio Argentino de Carreteras, 7,390 km (4,592 miles) in 10 stages, as co-driver to a townsman, Luis Finocchietti, in a 1937 Ford, No. 28. He was meant to be the riding mechanic; he drove most of the way, and they finished seventh. It was the first time he raced against the Gálvez brothers, Oscar and Juan, who overturned and retired. A fortnight later, in the 400 km (249 miles) of Tres Arroyos, he was eighth when the race was stopped on lap 4 after an accident that killed Fermín Martín and his co-driver, Miguel Zatuszek, with Plácido Ruiz and a spectator who had gone to help.

The black Chevrolet

For 1939 he wanted a Ford coupé and could not find one in time. Balcarce took up a public subscription instead and bought him a black 1939 Chevrolet, No. 38. By one account the collection came to 4,184 pesos, from the 500 of the local Conservative leader, Hortensio Miguens, and the 300 of the municipal commissioner, Raúl Oscar Rezusta, down to the 60 centavos of a neighbour, Félix Rocco. As Fangio told it: “My townsmen wanted me to do better — they organised a collection to buy me a car for the Gran Premio that October.” (attributed)

Tieri, a mechanic from the workshop, was a Ford man, and at every setback he cursed the Chevrolet and wished for a Ford, until Fangio laid down the law:

Bueno, viejo, nosotros vamos sobre un Chevrolet y somos corredores contra Ford, así que acá no se habla más de Ford. Una cosa es ganar con Ford y otra cosa es ganar con Chevrolet. Nosotros vamos a ganar con un Chevrolet.

Right, old man, we’re going in a Chevrolet and we’re racing against Ford, so no more talk of Ford here. It’s one thing to win with a Ford and another to win with a Chevrolet. We’re going to win with a Chevrolet.

The Gran Premio Argentino started at midnight on 19 October 1939 in Núñez, Buenos Aires, with 133 cars. At Pergamino, the first night, a big-end went, and they changed the connecting rod by the road in the dark. Beyond the Paraná the floods had turned the road to Concordia into a lake; he passed some 90 abandoned cars to be one of 41 to get there, and there the Automóvil Club stopped the race, with Oscar Gálvez first and Fangio 22nd.

It started again from Córdoba on 29 October as the Gran Premio Extraordinario, the cars sent there by train. At Córdoba the works team made things harder: “When the works cars came into the workshop they took my tools and the men who’d been helping me get the engine out.” (attributed) A General Motors man told him his crankshaft was beyond repair and that he would have to buy a new one; instead a local machinist, Stabio, reground the old one, and they packed a bronze half-bearing with a piece of hat brim for a seal. He was eighth into Santiago del Estero, the best of the Chevrolets, and third after Jujuy, where the same General Motors man now offered him whatever he needed, free. Asked how many tyres he wanted, he answered: “Two tyres… It took me so much by surprise that I didn’t dare ask for four.” (attributed)

He was second at Catamarca; then came the road to San Juan and the ford. On the next stage he went off at the S-⁠bend at Palmira, before Mendoza, and broke the rear spring mountings. He was 44th at San Luis, and recovered to finish fifth overall, seventh on the stage to Bahía Blanca and fourth on the last, to La Plata. Oscar Gálvez won, in a Ford. Fifth place was worth 2,000 pesos, and at home it counted for more: “In Balcarce they welcomed me as if I’d won.” (attributed) They had travelled light: “We wore overalls for everything, for work and for going out. They were the only clothes we took to the races.” (attributed)

In December he was 13th in the Mil Millas Argentinas (Argentine Thousand Miles), and 10th in the championship. At Miramar he sold the black coupé to pay his debts.

To Lima and back

For 1940 he had no car, so his friends ran a raffle of 1,000 tickets whose prize was the car he would race, a green 1940 Chevrolet coupé. The engine was left almost standard and everything else was strengthened for the distance. The Automóvil Club had conceived its new race as a step towards one to New York: the Gran Premio Internacional del Norte (Northern International Grand Prix), 9,445 km (5,869 miles) in 13 stages, from Buenos Aires over the Andes and the Bolivian altiplano to Lima and back.

It started at midnight on 27 September 1940 outside River Plate’s stadium in Buenos Aires, with 92 starters. Fangio had the green Chevrolet, No. 26, and Tieri beside him again. The first stage, 1,363 km (847 miles) to Tucumán, was the longest single stage ever run, and he was first to Tucumán, without stopping.

The outward leg, 4,768 km (2,963 miles), crossed into Bolivia at Villazón, about 3,500 m (11,500 ft) up, and climbed to Potosí, at 3,984 m (13,071 ft), then went on by La Paz and the shore of Lake Titicaca, Arequipa and Nazca to Lima, where the crews had two days’ rest. In Bolivia and Peru he had a collision in the neutralised zone at La Paz, broke the radiator, had some 20 punctures, took a rock strike on the 12th stage and had to change the differential. Oscar Gálvez, delayed near Lima, went over a cliff at night on the way back when his lights failed; the Gálvez brothers were unhurt, but out.

It was not stupid to be fearful where we went. Only a very wild man went alone without God through those lonely places. The things that happened to us!

On 12 October 1940 Fangio won, in about 109 hours, at an average of 86.2 km/⁠h (53.6 mph). About 32 of the 92 starters finished. It was the first win for Chevrolet in the category’s history, and a crowd waited at the finish in Luján.³ With the prize money he bought the car outright, and he put half of what was left into the business to clear its interest.

Eighth place in the Mil Millas in December was enough: he was champion of the Turismo Carretera for 1940, the first with a Chevrolet.

Champion twice

In June 1941 he and Oscar Gálvez were the two Argentines invited to Brazil for the Gran Premio Getúlio Vargas, seven stages from Rio de Janeiro and back, with 38 starters. Gálvez won the first two stages. Fangio, with Antonio Elizalde beside him, won the next three, the first of them on 24 June, his 30th birthday, in car No. 30: the only win he ever took on his birthday. On the way into São Paulo both Argentines took a wrong road, had to go back about 60 km (37 miles) and were penalised 2 hours, and still kept first and second. Gálvez won the last stage, and Fangio the race.

The Brazilian race counted for nothing in the Argentine championship. The title came with the Mil Millas on 13 and 14 December, 1,608 km (999 miles) from Bernal to Bahía Blanca and back: he won the first stage and the race, in 13 hours 33 minutes 56 seconds, and Juan Gálvez, who won the second stage, was second. That year Anselmo Aieta’s tango Fangio was first performed, at the Café Nacional in Calle Corrientes.

In January 1942 he won two stages of the Gran Premio del Sur, and on 2 April the first Mar y Sierras. Then the racing stopped. The war made tyres and cars unobtainable, and there was no road racing in Argentina from April 1942 until October 1947. He kept the workshop going on a smaller scale and travelled the south with his friend Héctor Barragán, buying old lorries and trailers for their tyres; by 1945–⁠1946, Motor Sport wrote at his death, he was dealing in American war-surplus trucks.

After the war

The first official racing after the war was for the home-built single-seaters of the Mecánica Nacional, and from February 1947 he won eight of his 12 races in them, first in La Negrita, a Ford T chassis with a Chevrolet engine, then in the red Volpi-Chevrolet. One of those wins, at Rosario on 1 March 1947, earned him a start in the international race that followed, against the visiting Europeans; he was sixth, and Achille Varzi won.

Road racing came back with the Doble Vuelta de Sierra de la Ventana, 540.8 km (336 miles), on 26 October 1947, and he won it in a red 1939 Chevrolet with a 1946 engine, No. 2.⁴ In November he was sixth in the Gran Premio, which ran into Chile, and in December he retired from the Mil Millas; he was third in the championship, which Oscar Gálvez won.

In 1948 he won the Vuelta de Pringles, 2,000 km (1,243 miles), at the end of February; lost the Mar y Sierras in April when his clutch failed in a duel with Oscar Gálvez, and dropped to 11th; and won the Vuelta de Entre Ríos, 1,503 km (934 miles), at the end of April, from Eusebio Marcilla’s Chevrolet. That year, too, he first drove a Grand Prix car, in January, and first raced in Europe, at Reims-Gueux in July.

Fangio and Gálvez

Through all those years his great rival was Oscar Gálvez, a Ford driver from the capital, and later his brother Juan. The country took sides. In 1951 Borocotó, the editor of El Gráfico, wrote that you were a Fangista or a Galvista, as you were for Boca Juniors or River Plate at football: “Fangio–Gálvez or Gálvez–Fangio is the equivalent of Boca–River or River–Boca.” (attributed)

They were different men. Tony Watson, telling Gálvez’s story in Motor Sport in 2003, saw the extrovert in Gálvez, arms waving, voice high, and the quiet one in Fangio, and respect and comradeship between them in every marathon. Whichever of them reached a stage finish first asked after the other: Gálvez would ask “How’s El Chueco doing?” (attributed) and Fangio “How’s Oscar doing?” (attributed) A photograph of 1942 shows Fangio, first to Bahía Blanca, waving the chequered flag for Gálvez as he came in second. They stayed friends until Gálvez died in 1989.

Huanchaco, 29 October 1948

In October 1948 the Automóvil Club sent the Turismo Carretera north to Venezuela in the Gran Premio de la América del Sur (South American Grand Prix), 9,575 km (5,950 miles) from Buenos Aires to Caracas through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. Fangio started on 20 October in the red Chevrolet, No. 1, with his friend Daniel Urrutia, also from Balcarce, as his co-driver. After mechanical trouble early on, he was fourth overall by Lima.

On the seventh stage, from Lima to Tumbes along the coast of Peru, in the dark early hours of 29 October, near the village of Huanchaco north of Trujillo, he went off the road. The car rolled several times down an embankment, and Urrutia was killed. Oscar Gálvez, close behind, was first on the scene; by one account he overturned his own car avoiding the tumbling Chevrolet, and then helped Fangio search for his friend. Eusebio Marcilla stopped, gave up his race, and took Fangio and Urrutia to hospital.

What caused the crash is not settled: fog, in Motor Sport’s obituary; dazzle and too little sleep in another account, which says the organisers had refused the drivers a rest day in Lima. Fangio called it his own fault, and in 1979 he put it down to fatigue, the cause, he said, of his crash at Monza in 1952 too. He thought of giving up. He told Nigel Roebuck in 1979 that he had nearly retired then, before he ever came to Europe; Urrutia had been his great friend.

I was the driver, but he was the one who died.

The race was won by Domingo Marimón in a Chevrolet. The museum’s list of drivers killed in the races of Fangio’s career also names Julián Elguea in the same event. Every 29 October Argentina marks a day for the co-drivers of its motor racing, in Urrutia’s memory.

The last road race

He raced on. In January 1949 he was second to Oscar Gálvez in the Mil Millas of 1948, run late, and before the year was out he had beaten the Europeans at Mar del Plata and won six races in Europe. In November, home again, he drove the Turismo Carretera once more, in the Gran Premio de la República, 11,035 km (6,857 miles) from 5 to 27 November. A bad flu almost made him give up, and he still won stages. Of his years on the road he remembered the country people who waited with parcels to push in through the window, chorizos, black puddings and bacon at Luján de Cuyo and at Vistalba: “People who have no time for envy. Working people.”

He finished second, between the brothers: Juan Gálvez first, Oscar third. “The lads caught me out of practice” (attributed), he said afterwards. As a driver he had started 18 Turismo Carretera races, all in Chevrolets, and won 7 of them, with 19 wins in 75 stages and the titles of 1940 and 1941.

People had followed those races on the radio. At Balcarce in 2021 the humorist Luis Landriscina remembered how the news reached his village: “I had a dynamo and was the only one in the village with a radio, so all the neighbours came to ask me how the Chueco had done in each race.”