Jacques Swaters & Chuck Jordan Pass

Goodbye Jacques.
Thanks for your friendship, sportsmanship and sharing your Ferrari passion with all of us.
I am proud of having raced for Ecurie Francorchamps.
My condolances to Florence and the family.
RIP

 

Florence, his daughter, let me know that Jacques Swaters passed away yesterday
10th december


really sad news, another founder of the great Ferrari History has gone.


RIP, Jacques 'Le Boss' Swaters !


°30-10-1926 - + 10-12-2010

 

RIP

 

we also have a facebook page 'Ecurie Francorchamps' with a lot of pictures

greetings, Vincent

 

Welcome to the chat Gaston. Although the occasion is very sad. I know you were so very proud to meet Jacques a few years ago.

 

If there's life after this, all of them will be sitting in Rene Dreyfus' spiritual Le Chantecler swapping their stories.

RIP Jacques and Chuck.

 

My late friend and mentor Denis Jenkinson lived in and raced from Brussels 1950-52 as sidecar passenger to the Belgian motorcycle rider Marcel Masuy. As racers they got to know Jacques Swaters and the rest of the Belgian sporting community very well, despite the standard social divide between the bikers and the four-wheeler racers. Jenks always thought highly of Swaters and his sequence of Belgian teams, ultimately racinq those gorgeous bright yellow Ferraris.

He told me Swaters was 'a good bloke' - just about the highest grade of commendation a proper Brit can give, and when I got to report on World Championship sports car racing in the 1960s/70s I found the man faultlessly kind and charming - as long as one asked questions at an appropriate time...

Many years later he spent much time showing me around his magnificent Ferrari archive - his deep knowledge and love of the subject self-evident. Of all the European Ferrari concessionaires Jacques was The Real Deal, the racer/dealer with whom Old Man Ferrari had the closest affinity...his old pre-war sparring partner Luigi Chinetti in the US was always 'a special case'. But where The Old Man would meet Colonel Hoare or Filipinetti in a grand restaurant or at the factory, Swaters the Racer would be invited back home, where Lina would fix the pasta while little Piero played with his toy cars around their feet. "And we would sit at the kitchen table", Jacques told me "...and I would tell him his next year's prototypes were way over-priced, we could not possibly race them, while he would assure me he was giving them away and could not see how he could possibly survive the financial loss...".

From wartime resistance teen to racing driver, businessman, above all enthusiast he was a great figure. So sad that his final few years proved so miserable for him... He is in a better place now.

Sincere condolences to his family and friends...

DCN

 

RIP

 

RIP Jacques.

 

Chuck Jordan passed away Thursday evening at his home in California. A true legend of automotive design,and a passionate Ferrari owner,collector of all things Ferrari.He once told me that traveling to Italy to see Enzo Ferrari was like going to meet the Pope! He will truly be missed and my heartfelt condolances go out to his family. There were very few people that had the dyed in the wool love for Ferraris,design,and cars that Chuck had.RIP Chuck,maybe you & Enzo can continue your conversations.

http://www.autoblog.com/2010/12/10/fabled-gm-design-chief-chuck-jordan-dead-at-83/

 

My passion will continue forever, thanks to Jacques.

RIP

JR

www.jacquesswaters.com

 

If memory serves me right, didn't Enzo take him for a few laps at Fiorano in a Testarossa?

 

RIP Jacques and Chuck.

 

I remember going ove rto Cranbrook to photograph it. It was maroon and lacked bumpers.I think he liked it that way. He had told Sergio he wanted a Ferrari and you can imagine the Ferrari dealers around town when Sergio himself called them and said he needed a car for an American. Chuck liked to tell about driving it over the Alps back to Germany where he was working for Opel.

He subsequently owned many more Ferraris but never kept the older ones when he got a new one, always preferring to drive Ferrari's latest expression of what they thought a Ferrari should be. I think he would have liked to be Design Director of Pininfarina but couldn't take the pay cut if they offered it.

His love of Ferraris passed to his son, Mark, who became an influential designer at Mazda, credited with the Miata. Mark's first Italian sports car was a Miura (I advised him to get that instead of a Testarossa because I said "If you only have ten minutes a week to drive it, it will be a more exciting ten minutes.")

Chuck would assign Pininfarina to do various clay models like the Chevrolet Monza. They also built the running Two Rotor prototype. On the Allante, Pininfarina was supposed to do the exterior design independent of GM but I think Chuck got a peek at it, don't know if any of his comments changed the design.

I even saw him in Europe at the Pininfarina stand--he was so enthusiastic about Ferraris that I think the GM people had to come over and dragoon him back on occasion.

With his white hair and prominent facial features,he could be quite intimidating but once you started to talk Ferraris he was as friendly as all get out. I never got a chance to ask him about Tricky Dick, I suppose his family being growers and Nixon's family owning a grocery store in Whittier, they knew each other.

I always got a kick out of how straight laced he was compared to his boss William L. Mitchell (Earl's successor) who could be surprisingly erractic for a big executive--I last saw Mitchell drag racing on Woodward Ave. in a white Mercedes pre-war car, I think an SSK that he had modified to look like an SSKL....

 

RIP to both of these gentlemen.



PDG

 

To Chuck and Jacques, RIP.

 

Sad news. I first met Chuck about 25 years ago. He was a great fan of Pininfarina. He was also gracious enough to write a piece about the design of the Ferrari BB for my book.
My condolences to his family and friends.
Nathan

 

Mr. Jordan, I could never bring myself to calling him Chuck, was an icon for automotive design. It is a pity that his tenure as VP of GM was so short (board room lunacy that he was passed over as Mitchell's successor).

His passion for Ferraris was legendary too. I was in his study where he worked on his 1/43rd white metal Ferrari models. He would have an array of books for photo reference then work the body surface on the models to get the forms more accurate. The painting was done at the GM Tech Center. He said one time that his idol was Enzo.

To Mark and the rest of the family, sincere condolences.

Jeff

 

Doug,
Why was he so miserable the last few years? Health issues?

George

 

RIP, Mr. Swaters.
I had the luck meeting you several times, I even got some Concours d'Elegance Prize out of your hands. For thousands you incorporated everything what the Ferrari Myth is about.
I remember the wonderful Event FF40 at the Brussels Cinquantenaire and at the Spa Francorchamps racetrack. It struck me how you were able to make a world gathering of 'gli amici del sabato'!
All the greats were there: Pozzi, Pininfarina, Piero Ferrari, Forghieri, Piper, Paul Frère, Chinetti, Scaglietti, di Montezemolo, Phil Hill, Gendebien, Benzing,Trintignant, Blaton ("Beurlys"), Pilette, and many others.
Condolences to Swaters' family and friends.

Here you'll find a full series of pics of the FF40 event, back in 1992:

http://www.barchetta.cc/All.Ferraris/events-stories/events/2003/ff40/ff40-index/index.html

 

Hi Jan,
Longtime ago (I think it was at the Boston conference). Yeah it was a great honour to meet Jacques. Fantastic...
Condolences to Swatters' family.

Maybe I see you at the conference in The Hague in january?

 

In 93/94 a small (4) group of us went for a long weekend visit to the Essen classic car show in Germany. On the way back to the UK on the Monday, we had arranged a visit to Garage Francorchamps to meet Jacques and visit his collection in the basement, it was my pleasure to meet a great man and certainly the nearest I will ever get to meeting Enzo!!

My condolences to his family.

R.I.P.

 

I had the pleasure of meeting Jacques in Maranello last year...A true gentleman..He signed a few of his Francorchamps posters for me..I fell very lucky to have met him.

 

Post : Jacques Swaters
URL : http://joesaward.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/jacques-swaters/
Posted : December 13, 2010 at 18:25
Author : joesaward
Categories : F1 Drivers, F1 people

Jacques Swaters has died at the age of 84. Swaters may not be a well known name in the modern era but in his day he was a big player: a Grand Prix driver in his own right; a team owner and the Ferrari concessionaire for Belgium.

The son of a Dutch father and a Belgian mother, Swaters grew up with his grandparents following the death of his mother when he was only two months old. He was fortunate in that his father has made a fortune with a pharmaceutical company called Raadkamp, which produced quinine in Sumatra. His father died when he was 12, just before the start of World War II. Jacques became involved in the resistance in his early teens as his sister Jacqueline was an active participant in a sabotage network called Group G, which was headed by his brother-in-law Georges Marcq, who was later arrested and died in the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp.

In May 1944 Jacques and Jacqueline were arrested by the Germans. She was released but he remained a prisoner for two months, being subjected to regular violent interrogations. He was being transported to Germany when the Belgian resistance attacked the train and he was able to escape and was reunited with his family when the Allied Forces liberated Brussels. He began training with a regiment of paratroopers in Belgium and later joined the 2nd Special Air Service Regiment where he completed his training before going to war in Holland. After the war ended Swaters won a place at the Université Catholique de Louvain, where he studied Philology, Literature and Pre-Law but he found life very dull and turned to racing for excitement. When he inherited his fortune he began racing, although he continued his studies until 1952. His first race was in 1948 when he made his debut in the Spa 24 Hours in a pre-war MG which he shared with Paul Frere. They finished
fourth in class. He established a
team called Ecurie Belgique and ran assorted pre-war machinery for an ever-widening group of friends, including Roger Laurent and Andre Pilette. In 1950 the team had enough cash to buy a Talbot-Lago Grand Prix car which they planned to enter in international events. At that point the Royal Automobile Club de Belgique decided that the name of the team was not acceptable and so it was forced to become Ecurie Francorchamps.

While this was happening Swaters was also in the process of setting up a garage in Brussels which took on the name Garage Francorchamps. Pilette crashed the Talbot at the Dutch Grand Prix in 1951 and so Swaters took over the repaired car. They needed a new car and so Swaters purchased a Formula 2 Ferrari 500 from Gianni Agnelli, thus beginning a relationship with Ferrari which would continue for more than 50 years. In the years that followed the team ran the Ferrari and Swaters won the Formula 2 race at AVUS. That year Ferrari asked Swaters to be their representative at the Brussels Salon and then he became the first Ferrari distributor in Europe. The team also enjoyed success with a Jaguar C-Type in sports car events and finished fourth at Le Mans and third in the Reims 12 Hours with Laurent. Swaters then concentrated on sports cars, taking the team's D-Type to third place at Le Mans with Johnny Claes in 1955. That same year he and Claes set up Ecurie
Nationale Belge at the behest
of Shell Belgium. To begin with ENB ran the old Ferrari but then moved on to Cooper-Climax F2 cars and in 1961 a pair of Emeryson-Maseratis. These were not much use and the team switched to Lotus 18s but later reworked the Emerysons and named them ENBs. The team disappeared when these failed to be competitive.

Ecurie Francorchamps continued, however, entering cars in races all over the world right through until the end of the 1970s and became one of the most respected Ferrari privateer organizations alongside Luigi Chinetti's North American Racing Team (NART). Swaters himself retired as a driver in 1957 to concentrate on his business which he would eventually sell to the Inchcape Group.

 

Thank's for all, Mr. Swaters...
I always found a physical resemblance between these two great men...
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