The Man and His Monster

A Unique Journey of Passion and Precision

Last weekend at Lime Rock’s Historic Festival 43, racing fans were treated to a rare sight that stood out from the usual lineup. It was the faithful re-creation of Le Monstre, piloted by Derek Drinkwater. This monstrous machine, known for its unique design and historical significance, brought back memories of the original, which was once driven by Briggs Cunningham.

For Derek Drinkwater, now 63, this journey began in his childhood. “I was around 10 years old when I had an eye injury at school,” he recalls. “I wasn’t allowed to play sport. I couldn’t go into the engineering area, so I left school. I was doing things with my father and was welding at the age of 14. A friend and I started taking bikes apart and building trikes or four-wheeled bikes. Now and again, we tried to slap a motor in one. It got progressively worse from there.”

By the time he was 18, Drinkwater was drag racing in the Rover 3.5 Challenge, a series that allowed you to drop Rover’s Buick-sourced V-8 into any street-legal car. “We shoe-horned it into a Ford Capri.” Soon, he got sidetracked by rowing and did so professionally for about five years. “My claim to fame was sitting in with the Olympic Eight in training camp for two weeks. I also did some bike racing and jet ski racing.” Then he met the woman who would become his wife, Pat, and he realized he needed to earn some money.

“She was into horses, and I convinced her to switch to cars.” The couple started a business dealing in vintage vehicles and used a 1948 Diamond T to tow around their inventory. It proved a successful venture, and soon Drinkwater began building horseboxes, motorhomes, and custom trailers. Then he got into racing. “It was always on a budget,” he says. “People would ask me where my crew is, and I’d tell them, ‘I do the driving, I do the mechanicing, I drive the truck, and Pat looks after me.’”

For one crucial reason—that single event—Drinkwater has always had a predilection for American machines. “I’m blind in my right eye, so it’s easier to drive a left-hand drive car. I don’t have a door pillar, and I can see more, I’m more content.”

In 2013, he was running a 1965 Mustang when a friend from Oregon called to ask if Drinkwater was interested in building something to run at Bonneville. His is primarily a summer-heavy business, and he told his friend he could only spare a month for the side quest. He and Pat flew over just before Goodwood. “My friend was busy with his farm. He showed me into a building, and there was an engine over there and a chassis over there, and we had a month to build it. It was a ’31 Chevy, with a Buick inline-eight 320 with a high-speed box, and it wasn’t very pretty. The car didn’t pass tech. We had to go away, and three days later come back with a lot of bits taken care of. We didn’t go very fast, about 65 miles an hour, but it was all about having a go.”

Soon after, he sold the Mustang and set his sights on road racing. “I had a Galaxie that I did the Spa Six Hours with, but Le Mans was always in the back of my mind, a bucket-list event. We looked at all the cars that were eligible to run the Classic, and we couldn’t afford any of them. Except one.”

“Pat found a 1950 Cadillac sedan. We visited the Revs Institute [in Naples, Florida], had a look at their Series 61 sedan, put ours together like the Cunningham car, and ran that at the Classic. After that, I knew I had to build a copy of Le Monstre,” the famously modified Series 61 that Cunningham also campaigned at the 1950 race.

Mrs. Drinkwater, however, was not so sure. “Pat said NO! We’re not going to do that. She thought I was crazy.” Still, the couple returned to the Revs Institute, shot photos, and took measurements of the original.

“Pat found me another 1950 short-wheelbase Cadillac out in Arizona to start with, but it didn’t have the column shift or pedal box that we needed. Pat is a finder, though. She found a 1950 flower car [from the funeral industry], and we took the bits off that for our build. The Revs was very helpful to us along the way with other pictures and measurements so that we would be spot-on.”

Back in the U.K., Drinkwater got to work. “I built a giant projector screen and put the chassis in front of it and projected it life-size. I drew an image on screen—screws, rivets, and all, and I had my starting point. From there, I started to build the car. I didn’t have compound curves to deal with, but as I built it, I would stand back from it, then take a hammer to it and fettle it a little bit. I wanted it to look original, but I knew the original existed, so I wanted to honor it with my build. Because mine wouldn’t exist if the original didn’t.”

Drinkwater had done his homework on Cunningham and the history of Le Monstre, and he took a novel approach to the project: “I decided to build mine within the same time frame it took to build the original. Five months. It was day and night. It was like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the mad inventor Caractacus Potts. Pat would slide food under the door, and at least once she found me fast asleep under the car. I tend to be very focused once I get started on a project. Nothing gets in the way. Not hunger, not tiredness. I became addicted to it.”

Since completing the build in 2018, Drinkwater has run it at Brands Hatch, Goodwood, and several times at Le Mans. Last year, he had invites to the Classic 24 Hours at Daytona, to Laguna Seca, and Road America. This weekend, he’s racing it at the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Festival, and last week, when we caught up with him, he was competing at Lime Rock’s Historic Festival 43.

As so few people have driven the original, it is illuminating to hear Drinkwater’s take on the beast. “It has its moments, as everything on it is genuine 1950s parts—and all that goes with that. We were at a track talk at Daytona and were told that when you get to a level at the back banking, you could let go of the wheel and the car would be happy. But at no point on that bank was my car happy. Here at Lime Rock, second gear is too low, so I’m in third most of the time. Taking a fast lap, I turn in and brake late, and the car just wants to go straight. I didn’t lock up, but I could smell the brakes. It’s like a massive go kart. It doesn’t roll too much for being so big, whereas the [Series 61] sedan is like a powerboat, the way it rolls. Le Monstre, once it goes, you haven’t got enough steering to correct it. You have to be on the edge, but not push past that. If you do, it will tear the wheel right out of your hands, and you’re in for a ride. It’s challenging. It’s like driving a vintage truck. It takes a long time to change up and change down, and you have a lot of brake fade on a short track. It’s more at home on a long track, like Le Mans. It features a 331 V-8 Cadillac engine with 160 horsepower, but it boasts torque that keeps pulling. I’ve been driving it for four years now, so it doesn’t really have any surprises left for me.”

Like Cunningham’s original, which finished 11th at Le Mans in 1950, Drinkwater’s Le Monstre is not a winning car. He doesn’t care. For him, it’s about getting out on track and allowing the crowds see something they may never have seen before. It’s also a way to connect to the past. “The more I learned about Briggs Cunningham, the more fascinated I became with him, and the more it spurred me to build the cars. Every time I go out on a new track, I feel I get a teensy taste of what he had at Le Mans. At 63, I’m probably more of a romantic than a race car driver. I love the story, and I try to race it competently. If the car is mid-field, I’m delighted. People actually see I’m racing it. It’s not a static display. At Goodwood, I had a spin and nearly took out Lord March’s daffodils. Luckily, I didn’t, as you get a fine for it.”

The Cadillacs of Briggs Cunningham ran a dozen years before Derek Drinkwater was born, but they speak to him. “When I was building Le Monstre, it wasn’t a job—it was an obsession, an addiction. Something went off in my head, and I had to build it. I had a few mates helping me, but 95% of the work was done by me. Body, chassis, paint, everything. I know this car intimately, and when I am on the track, I may be partially deaf, but the car speaks to me.”