Former F1 driver and constructor Guy Ligier has died at the age of 85. Although he contested only a dozen races during his three seasons as an F1 driver, posting a best finish of 6th in the 1967 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, Ligier subsequently founded the team that bore his name and contested F1 for another two decades.
A former international rugby player, Ligier made his fortune in construction and began racing on motorcycles before progressing to cars, but stepped out of the cockpit following the death of his close friend, Jo Schlesser in 1968. When he then became a constructor, first in sports cars and later F1, Ligier’s cars always remembered his friend with the JS designation in their type numbers (JS7 above). After Ligier bought the assets of the French Matra operation, cars bearing his name won eight Grands Prix, three with Matra power and five powered by Ford engines, and the team finished 2nd in the F1 Constructors Championship in 1980, having run 3rd the year before.
Connections to the French government, especially president François Mitterand, helped ease Ligier’s way, but with Mitterand’s government in crisis in 1992, Ligier’s F1 team was acquired by Alain Prost, but soon disappeared from the scene. Ligier himself went on to enjoy success in agriculture before focusing on micro cars. To his family and many friends in the sport, Vintage Racecar extends its sincerest sympathies.
