The Grand Dame of Motorsport

She was known to all as Anì, but her full name, Annie Blanche Marie Soisbault, was one that resonated with an unassailable authentic dignity. One that was destined to then take on aristocratic associations following her marriage to Marquis Philippe de Montaigu, which conferred upon her both title and surname: Marquise Annie Blanche Marie Soisbault de Montaigu. Anì was lovely in her own way. An aristocratic vein that was not at all snobbish was further refined by sporting endeavours that saw her untroubled at the wheel of extraordinarily powerful cars. Very few men, and no women before her, could afford to own those dangerous, costly machines or, above all, to race them. And to think, her first love in the world of sport had been tennis.

Her father, Robert Soisbault (of the Parisian upper middle class and its fifteenth arrondissement, where Annie was born in the shade of the Eiffel Tower on 8 June, 1934) had encouraged her ever since she was a little girl, and she gradually convinced him that he’d been right to do so, by winning no fewer than seven national titles one after the other in various youth categories. Her magic moment at international level came when she was 18 years old, reaching the semi-finals of Wimbledon’s Junior Championship. But something was stirring inside her, that inviolable thirst for freedom, from family, for financial independence. In short, for liberté.

After she won the French rally championship in 1958 Triumph offered her a place in their official team. Annie accepted, and took the European rally championship crown the following year. Leaving no racing stone unturned, she also tried a single-seater, a Lola Mk2-Ford in Formula Junior. In a mixed Junior/Formula 2 race at Chimay, in Belgium, her transmission broke but she finished 12th out of 24 overall, third in Junior. Other exploits in the early 1960s included fifth in the Mont Ventoux hill climb, where she was the first woman to achieve an average speed of more than 100 kilometres an hour. On 14 September, she lined up for the Tour Auto at the wheel of a Ferrari 250 GTO/64. Her husband had bought it from Jacques Swaters, founder of the Écurie Francorchamps team, renowned Ferrari importer in Belgium, and himself a good driver. It was a berlinetta destined to become legendary and to attract dizzying sales prices, but no one was to know that at the time … What everyone did know, however, was that it had set out to conquer the third GT World Championship title in a row for Ferrari. 

Its 3-litre V12 engine unleashed the potent 300 cv that had so surprised Enzo Ferrari three years earlier, when, during a break in qualifying at the 1961 Italian Grand Prix in Monza, Stirling Moss had tested the GTO prototype on the road circuit (thus excluding the high-speed loop), and recorded a time of one minute 45.4 seconds against the usual one minute 50 recorded by the single-seaters. Prompting Ferrari himself to say: “We’ve never seen a GT in front of the Formula One’s!” Upon Anì’s arrival for the final on-track speed test for the 1964 Tour Auto, the ‘Grand Old Man’ wanted to meet Annie, who was presented to him by Jacques Goddet, patron of the race as well as of the Tour de France bicycle race.

Flaunting his French, which he handled fairly well, the Ferrari manufacturer congratulated ‘Madame’, asking whether she was satisfied with the berlinetta’s performance and whether she thought it “obedient” to her commands. And Annie replied that it was a car that needed to be “learnt”, but then, once gaining speed it was a pleasure because it felt perfectly balanced, and she cited the opinion of British driver Mike Salmon who had likened the car to “a ballet dancer on four wheels”.

Annie was first in class at the finish line for that edition of Tour Auto. And came fourth in the 1,000 kilometres of Paris, together with Guy Ligier, with a 250 LM from Écurie Francorchamps. In 1965 she then alternated between GTO and LM but suffered six retirements The races thinned out, with forgettable results: attempts in the East African Safari (1966) and in the Paris-Saint Raphaël (1969). Both retirements. Annie followed that with her own, definitive, retirement. In Paris, on the Avenue de Versailles, Annie successfully managed the renowned Aston Martin importer, Garage Mirabeau, in the era of the DB5 and Zagato’s DBS which enjoyed the staggering boost that came from the James Bond films. Fully assimilated into high society the remaining half-century that destiny reserved for her she lived out as an active, serene, bonne vivante between Paris and Saint Tropez. The final chequered flag waved for Anì on 18 September 2012.