Benoît Musy

13/12/1917 - 7/10/1956

Record updated 12-Dec-18

Benoît Nicolas Musy raced Moto Guzzi motorcycles winning six Swiss Championships. He also raced various Maserati. He died racing at Montlhéry in France, driving a Maserati 200S.

Benoît Musy
Benoît Nicolas Musy was born December 13, 1917 in Fribourg (Switzerland). His father, Dr. Jean-Marie Musy, was a Swiss federal councilor and President of Switzerland from 1925 until 1930. After graduating from secondary school in Bern, Benoît received his degree in agricultural engineering. In the military he achieved the rank of Lieutenant and became a pilot. From 1938 to 1948, he worked in the agriculture business.

In 1947, he became the first military skydiver and obtained the second licence. As a civil and military pilot, he logged over 1,700 landings. In 1944, during World War II, Benoit became famous for rescuing 1200 Jews from the concentration camp at Theresienstadt with the aid of his father.

In 1950 he married Manuela Consuelo Heusch, the daughter of Eduard Hugo Heusch, an industrialist from Barcelona Spain. They had a son, Edouard-Jean.
  
From 1947 to 1953 Musy raced Moto Guzzi motorcycles on a professional basis. He won Swiss Championship (250 cc and 500 cc) six times.

Benoît's had always wanted to race cars and in 1954 he made the switch by purchasing a two liter Maserati A6-GCS from the factory.

In 1955, after many wins in international races with 150S and 200S Maseratis, he acquired a new Maserati 300S (3057).

He died on the 7th of October 1956 at the wheel of a Maserati 200S in Montlhéry France. The steering column of Musy's Maserati broke on one of the banked corners. He lost control and the car veered to the left and then went straight over the 18 meter high banking at over 240 kmh. It landed some 100 meters from the track having hit a small building and a parked transporter. Musy was thrown out and crushed. The emergency service were quickly on the scene but Musy was already dead. Louis Rosier was also killed in a separate accident in that same race.

In 1958 Benoît Musy's wife, Consuelo Heusch Musy, sold the 300S to the Angola Racing team. The car was raced for several seasons with some mechanical modification, and was subsequently left unattended for almost three decades in a garage in Africa. Fortunately, in the late 1980's a car enthusiast, Mr. Stein Johnsen, rescued the car and in the UK, the 300S underwent a complete restoration process. In 1994 after two years of painstaking craftsmanship the car emerged like new. Since the new Milleneum, the Maserati 300S has been back on the race track competing in a series of races under the banner of the "Old-Timer Grand Prix," such as at Nürburgring 2001 and throughout Europe.





hr

<