Rene dreyfus biography

René Albert Dreyfus (6 May 1905 – 16 August 1993) was a French racing driver active during the 1930s and 1940s.
Born in France in 1905, at the dawn of the automotive age, René Dreyfus became fascinated with automobiles and convinced his father to let him race the family.
Celebrated as both a racing driver and a restaurateur, he was born in Nice in 1905, the son of a wealthy linen merchant.

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René Dreyfus

French racing driver (1905–1993)

René Albert Dreyfus (6 May 1905 – 16 August 1993) was a French racing driver active during the 1930s and 1940s.^[1]

Early life

Dreyfus was born and raised in Nice to a Jewish family. He showed an early interest in automobiles, learning to drive before the age of nine. The middle of three children, his brother Maurice served as his business partner in his youth, and his manager in his racing career.

Career

Driving career

Driving Maseratis, Ferraris, Delahayes, and Bugattis against some of the greatest drivers of all time, Dreyfus won 36 races across Europe, including Monaco, Florence, Rheims, Belgium, Cork, Dieppe, Pau, and at Tripoli in North Africa, becoming a French national hero.

He acquired a Bugatti and joined the Moto Club de Nice for younger competitive automotive enthusiasts. In 1924 he won his class in the first amateur race he entered, being the only entrant in the class, and went on to win three consecutive French Riviera championships in the next five years. In 1929 he entered

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I have driven a racing car. On television, it looks like a smooth and scientific matter. It is not. A racing car is a fearsome environment of engulfing pyroclastic heat, metaphor-testing noise, vision-blurring vibration and nauseating centrifugal forces. Ninety years ago it was even worse. The cars had tyres with little grip, feeble brakes and no crash protection whatever. Hot oil would continuously spray over drivers, who raced in linen caps; and an off, as they call excursions, would often result in mutilation or immolation.

Faster is the story of René Dreyfus, who flourished in this atrocious atmosphere, in a culture where the public found the achievement of speed a transfixing spectacle. After all, Aldous Huxley believed speed was the only sensation unique to the 20th century, since flight had been known to 18th-century balloonists.

A suave, rich, non-observant Niçois Jew, Dreyfus existed in a cascade of Jazz Age brilliance, with plenty of champagne and casino visits.

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Racer, Restaurateur, Legend

His second life was about to begin – in America.

Seeking a new profession, Rene bought a small restaurant in New Jersey and studied English. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, he decided to enlist in the US Army. Becoming a Staff Sergeant, he was sent to Italy where he commanded a transportation company. Courageous under fire, he received a battlefield promotion to Master Sergeant. In 1944, René was able to locate his brother Maurice and sister Suzanne in France, where they had worked with the Resistance. At the war’s end, Dreyfus returned to the States, became an American citizen, and brought his two siblings to New York. Driving professionally again seemed impractical. Instead he bought Le Gourmet restaurant in New York City, which evolved into Le Chanticlair, an elegant fine dining establishment on Manhattan’s East Side. Le Chanticlair would become the unofficial headquarters for the racing community, as well as a restaurant frequented by celebrated folk from the arts, the film, politics, the entertainment and the fashion