halfshaft and retired, leaving the Lancias comfortably in front. Also retired at this time was the larger-engined Porsche, leading the S1500 class in a close tussle with the OSCA, running 14th and 15th overall respectively. It had come in to refuel and left the engine running in case it stalled permanently. That was against the safety rules and the officials disqualified the car. But the OSCA was no more fortunate: soon afterward, just coming out of Arnage, the clutch broke. Lacour got out and pushed the car the 3 km back to the pits only to be told by his pitcrew that the damage was terminal. Finish and post-race The race was quietly running down to its conclusion, with the home crowd looking forward to a second French victory in four years. But then suddenly, with just over an hour to go, the connecting rod of "Levegh's" Talbot broke, causing it to come to a halt at Maison Blanche about a mile from the pits. Driving without a working rev-counter, it is uncertain whether either the engine issues finally broke it, or through sheer exhaustion, he missed a gear-change and over-revved the engine catastrophically. But such was his lead it still took 20 minutes for the second-placed Mercedes-Benz to get ahead on distance. A final twist saw the Aston Martin retire, moving the Nash-Healey of Johnson/Wisdom up to 3rd ahead of Briggs Cunningham's own car and the recovering Ferrari of Simon / Vincent. Like many, Cunningham had been nursing a slipping clutch through most of the race, driving for 20 hours himself gradually moving up the order. So Mercedes-Benz were as surprised as anyone to have the 1-2 victory. This was the first win for a closed-body car, and for a German manufacturer. Although the weather had been good, it was a torrid race with a record 40 retirements from the 57 starters. The lone Ferrari had fought back into the top ten during the morning, and after the late-race retirements made it up to 5th. The privateer team of Clark and Keen was the only Aston Martin to finish this year (in 5th) and the only Talbot to finish was Chambas’ supercharged special in 9th. For the third year in a row, Pierre Hémard won the Index of Performance (although this year his co-driver was Eugène Dossous) in the little Monopole-Panhard. just ahead of the two Mercedes-Benz coupés. They