Matra-Bonnet Djet – Leading from the Middle

The René Bonnet Djet was the world’s first mid-engined production road car. Glen Waddington enjoys a momentous French Lotus rival.

You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Yuri Gagarin, Russian cosmonaut and the first human to journey into outer space, was gifted a car in return for his extraterrestrial endeavours. A shiny black Volga was quite a commodity in the Soviet Union. Yet it wasn’t Gagarin’s only car. Perhaps rather more surprisingly, his adventurous spirit and courageous acts earned him a sporting little French number – one at the cutting edge of technology, being the first mid-engined production road car. An innovation of this world rather than out of it, but a remarkable machine nonetheless, and presented to a remarkable man.

Yet the reason goes beyond a hero’s reward, and beyond the fact that the René Bonnet Djet was such a forward-thinking piece of engineering. You see, although the car initially was the result of private enterprise and the brainchild of a skilled engineer, as is so often the case, production investment bankrupted its originator and forced the business into the hands of another company, the name of which was an acronym for Mécanique Aviation Traction.

The suitably Space Age coupé you’re looking at here is a 1966 Matra-Bonnet Djet 5S Luxe, an evolution of the car that began life under Société René Bonnet Automobiles in 1962. Its glassfibre body was provided from the outset by Matra, a specialist in composite construction among other things, such as aerospace technology and missiles. In the hope of furthering its stellar commercial aspirations, Matra gifted a Djet to Gagarin while he was on a visit to France, the itinerary of which included the Renault plant in Flins, outside Paris, where the Djet’s Renault 8 Gordini engine was manufactured. That was in 1965. He promptly took it back with him to Moscow. Beyond a few PR photos around the Soviet capital’s Alley of Heroes and iconic landmarks such as Moscow State University, little has been seen of it since.

To be fair, not so much has been seen of the Djet in general. Over a period of five years, only 1693 were built in total. Yet its impact is beyond doubt. It pipped De Tomaso’s Vallelunga (only 59 built) to be the first mid-engined production road car and taught the world that a competition-style engineering solution could be translated for everyday purposes. Then came De Tomaso’s Mangusta, the Lamborghini Miura, the Ferrari Dino, Lotus Europa and more, not least Matra’s own M530. And while mid-engined supercars quickly became the norm in the stratosphere of the market, there’s something encouragingly Liberté, égalité, fraternité about a Frenchman bringing the first to market for a more down-to-earth price – only twice that of a Renault family car and half that of the Jaguar E-type.

That Frenchman was René Bonnet, whose story is fascinating in itself. As a child he’d learnt to work with his hands alongside his carpenter father, but, following a back injury while in the French Navy and subsequently contracting tuberculosis, he returned to his hometown, where he made shawls after learning the craft in a sanatorium. Then his sister’s husband died, and he was invited to help her run the family garage business. Bonnet turned out to be a successful salesman, and the garage took over a small carrosserie called La Maison Deutsch. Its late founder’s son, Charles Deutsch, worked with Bonnet, and from 1946 the two developed their own Deutsch-Bonnet cars, based on Citroën and Panhard mechanicals.

Together they built around 2000 but then parted company in 1961, citing differences in design philosophy. They had been active in endurance racing, notably with lightweight aerodynamic cars that achieved three class victories at Le Mans, four on the Mille Miglia and two at Sebring. But come the crunch, Charles Deutsch wanted to continue his pursuit of front-engined racers with tiny Panhard motors and unusually high top speeds, resulting in a handful of CD sports cars and a move into engineering consultancy. Bonnet set up Société René Bonnet Automobiles in Romorantin, about 90 miles south-east of Le Mans, with a goal of producing an agile mid-engined road car based on Renault mechanicals. Thus was born the René Bonnet Djet.

The Renault in question was the rear-engined R8 saloon, which donated its engine, steering, front suspension, front brakes (discs, fitted at the rear, too), 15in wheels, pedals and heating. Inside, some switchgear came from the R10, while the transaxle gearbox was sourced from the Renault Estafette, a front-wheel-drive van that made Renault unique at the time for building vehicles with that layout as well as the more traditional rear-wheel-drive and rear-engine arrangements.

The rear suspension was innovative, featuring unusually short twinned dampers and coil springs, inspired by the then-recently launched Jaguar E-type and designed not to intrude into the luggage compartment, aft of the engine. All suspension geometry was adjustable, so every Djet could be optimised for track use.

Bonnet himself issued an ambitious press release: ‘The program of our new firm is vast. It consists of making French colours shine in competition and offering amateurs a range of safe and fast models, at particularly competitive prices, benefitting directly and very quickly from the experience of racing, but easy to maintain since they are built from very large series elements.’ In other words, competition-bred cars with inexpensive proprietary mechanical parts.

Bonnet worked with chief engineer Jacques Hubert to develop the Djet, the latter shaping a polyester resin and glassfibre hull that would be provided by Générale d’Application Plastique (GAP), a subsidiary of Matra that also happened to be based in Romorantin. Its drag factor was purported to be just 0.25, and it employed the deeply curved windscreen of the rare-groove Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Speciale.

An early prototype was tested by taking part in the 1962 Nürburgring 1000km and the Le Mans 24 Hours, but the public launch was delayed from July’s Bowling de Paris show to the Paris Auto Salon in October. The reason? Bonnet’s son Claude cited the high price of embedding a tubular chassis within the plastic bodywork and noted the limitations it enforced on suspension adjustability for competition versions. So the design was revised around a Lotus-style backbone, with the R8 donating its front crossmember.

A certificate of conformity was finally granted on 5 June 1963, and just ten days later a modified Djet took to the track at La Sarthe. Called ‘Aérodjet’, following aerodynamic work in the wind tunnel at Bréguet that brought the drag factor down to 0.22, it finished 11th overall and first in its class, taking the Index of Thermal Efficiency prize for the highest score based on weight, fuel usage and average speed. Production of the world’s first mid-engined road car then began in July.

By 1964, Bonnet’s ambitious plans had overstretched his resources, and Matra took over. The car was refined, renamed the Matra-Bonnet Djet, and in 1966 the model evolved into the Djet 5 and 5S. It was a hit with the press. ‘Have you ever driven a Formula 3 car on normal roads? This is exactly what it feels like to drive a Djet 5,’ wrote Autosport in 1966.

One of the few examples in the UK belongs to Jeremy Wilson. ‘I was looking for something rare and special,’ he says. ‘I’ve already done about 1600 miles in it, including a trip to France last summer. It was reliable and great fun.’

Up close, the Djet feels diminutive yet well-proportioned. It’s agile, lively, and engaging, with direct steering and a fizzing Gordini engine. On winding roads, it flows beautifully, rewarding precise inputs with balance and composure. A worthy Lotus rival? Absolutely. Whether it was quite a match for Vostok 1 in the eyes of Gagarin remains unreported.

1966 Matra-Bonnet Djet 5S Luxe specifications