REMEMBERING GRIFFO
THE NAME WAS FAMILIAR. I recalled his byline from American magazines such as Car & Driver and True’s Automotive Yearbook and remembered his tales on Bonneville, the Miller front-drive Indy racers and the fascinating people involved in cars. The name was Griffith Borgeson. And it’s now 42 years since I discovered a pile of manuscripts he’d written.
Back then, I’d just been made the editor of Australia’s Wheels magazine, and I delved into the stack of stories and instantly realised they embraced a wonderful variety of subjects, all beautifully written, sharply drawn and displaying what I came to understand was Borgeson’s trademark precision and brevity. One, especially, was a minor masterpiece. The evocative story of Erich Maria Remarque’s Lancia Dilambda first appeared in Motor (20 August 1969). Remarque, author of the definitive World War One novel All Quiet on the Western Front, used the Dilambda to escape from the Nazis on three occasions.
The V8 Dilambda, a rare and fantastic Lancia featuring a 24º4.0-litre V8 engine, was launched in 1928. Borgeson stumbled upon the car by accident and, questioning as always, found its owner. The encounter with Remarque, married to the beautiful actress Paulette Goddard, herself the former wife of Charlie Chaplin, led to a story rich in passion and adventure as well as cars. It famously began, ‘This I swear is exactly the way it happened…’
Who was this American, I wondered, apparently living in Italy, with an unmatched ability to combine cars and
