Image: Robert Roux

We’re suckers here for two things; 1) brutal racing cars of the 1970s and 2) cutaway drawings of brutal racing cars of the 1970s.

When these things come together we are bowled over.

So, for your delight, behold this lovely period cutaway and an equally pleasing video of Matra’s bruiser from 1970, the V12 engined M650.

French company Matra was originally an aerospace firm which specialised in advanced missile systems. But someone in the organisation obviously loved the idea that ballistics could be transposed into tarmac-bound propulsion.

Matra produced some interesting road cars over the years, particularly the sporty, chic Bagheera and the Rancho — a forward looking SUV before its time.

But the company’s racing arm deserves to be remembered most fondly. They produced interesting projects toward the end of the 1960s throughout the seventies and into the eighties, including fruitful collaborations with Ford and Ligier.

In the video below you can see (and hear) the brilliance of the V12 engined 650, developments of which led to a trio of outright victories at Le Mans between 1972–1974.

The fact that this uncompromising machine was able to break the dominance of Porsche during this classic era is testament to its right to be dragged from relative obscurity.

Try to ignore the loungecore  soundtrack and skip to 1.15 when the true symphony begins…

Click here to view the embedded video.

When I was growing up a neighbour had a Matra Simca Bagheera. This neighbour was a vaguely bohemian PE teacher — a strange combo of things if ever there was one.

Our neighbour’s Bagheera had been named after the snooty but sleek panther character in the hollywood version of Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book — and like Kipling’s fictional cat it was a lithe, nimble little lightweight. It had a polyester shell that lent it svelte, flexible aspect but the steel frame beneath the skin came without protection from corrosion. They tended therefore to rot — and that’s explains why these days you don’t see many of them about.

The PE teacher/Bagheera pilot was friendly with my dad, and after the old man had popped in to see him, usually on some ostensible DIY mission, he often whiffed faintly of patchouli oil.

There were a lot of nods and winks about the guy on our street — he was a good looking bloke in his late twenties with long shaggy hair — and at all hours there seemed to be a constant stream of pretty girls coming in and out of the house.

There was an air of mystery about him; a vague hint of a quirky sort of otherness. I always wondered what dad was really doing in the PE teacher’s house. Looking back, you can see that this mysterious aspect of him was perfectly reflected in the car he drove.

This was the seventies, things were looser, less defined.

Cars always seemed back then to say something about who you were. That might still be true today — but if so the utterence is less compelling.

How many of the things your car says about you are not really worth saying?

Jackie Stewart shot to prominence when he won the 1969 world championship in a French-built Matra MS80 run by Ken Tyrrell.

Stewart, with his long hair, corduroy cap and shades, was more Beatle than racing driver and became an icon as the Swinging Sixties morphed into the seventies.

Stewart had lost a three-way final round ’68 title shoot-out in Mexico but there was no stopping him in ‘69. The championship was played out over just 11 rounds back then and Jackie started with a win at Kyalami in South Africa.

After a two month gap he was fortunate to win Spain, which was notable for spectacular accidents to Lotus drivers Graham Hill and Jochen Rindt when the high aerofoil rear wings that were starting to proliferate in F1, broke under load. They were banned from the next race on, in Monte Carlo. Stewart led Monaco from pole position and set fastest lap, but the Matra retired and Hill won.

Stewart made himself all but unbeatable when he scored a hat-trick of wins at the Dutch, French and British Grands Prix. He got a fright at Silverstone, however, when a bit of loose kerbing at Woodcote corner punctured a tyre and put him off at 150mph in practice. He took over team mate Jean-Pierre Beltoise’s car for the race, while the Frenchman was shunted across into the recalcitrant four-wheel-drive Matra MS84 spare car. Later that season in Canada, the car became the only 4WD to score an F1 championship point, albeit six laps down in Johnny Servoz-Gavin’s hands in Canada!

Stewart fought an epic Silverstone battle with friend and chief foe Rindt, until the Austrian was slowed by a car problem. At Monza in September, Stewart took his sixth win of the season and clinched his first world title in what is still the closest four-car blanket finish in F1 history.

Pre-chicane Monza was famous for its slipstreaming battles and Stewart deliberately took a long fourth gear ratio so that he did not have to change gear between the exit of Parabolica and the finish line on the last lap. He came out of Parabolica second to Rindt’s Lotus but was ahead by eight hundredths as they flashed across the line, with less than 0.2s covering Stewart, Rindt, Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Bruce McLaren.

Shaky footage below of an incredible last few corners at Monza

Click here to view the embedded video.

Already, Stewart was active on the safety front which, as well as his then-record 27 victories and three world titles, would be one of the enduring legacies he left behind when he retired in ‘73. Trapped in a BRM leaking fuel at Spa in ’66, Stewart was appalled by the lack of marshalling professionalism and then the makeshift medical facilities with cigarette butts all over the floor.

That ’69 season saw Spa boycotted after a circuit inspection by Stewart. New Armco barriers would be installed before the race, one of the most dangerous on the calendar, returned in 1970. At the time, Jackie’s safety stand opened him to ridicule although, quietly, all his contemporaries were behind him. That first world title in ’69 increased his worldwide profile massively and gave him the platform from which he became one of the sport’s most influential figures.

Great home movie footage below of the British GP of that amazing season

Click here to view the embedded video.