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 

-  Glen Waddington

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.