Remembering the Long Distance Lady

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You will have heard of Kay Petre, Hellé Nice or Dorothy Levitt, who were all ladies who knew how to handle racing cars of the 1920s and 1930s. Violette Cordery was another, and she was born in London 120 years ago today, only to become a star of the racing tracks at under 20 years of age.

Violette did have the luck of an older sister who married into the car business, so to speak, as Lucy Cordery married the later Invicta boss Captain Noel Macklin. But it was Violette who received Macklin’s attention when it came to driving. She had competed in one of his early Specials in 1920 (picture 1) and managed to win on more than one occasion. Next, it was Violette who became what one would later call the works team manager for Invicta, running the works driver’s team very successfully. At Monza in 1926 they set records averaging 56.47mph on the 10,000 miles distance in a 19.6hp Invicta and 55.76mph on the 5,000 miles, plus the 70.70mph on the 5,000 miles of Montlhéry in the same car. This earned her the title of ‘The Long Distance Lady’.

Could these records be bettered? They certainly could. Cordery decided that the around the world challenge would be the ultimate test to prove the Invicta’s reliability in 1927 (pictures 3, 4, 5). The over 10,000 miles journey over five continents took her more than five months and much more publicity (film footage here). Next year Violette and her younger sister Evelyn teamed up to clock up 30,000 (!) miles round the Brooklands track, which they managed to make in just under 21 days and nights (picture 2). And still, she went on, driving an Invicta 4.5-Litre from London to Monte Carlo and back in third gear, from London to John O’Groats in second and from London to Edinburgh in first! She stopped racing in 1931 when she married – once more to a motoring man: John Hindmarsh, who won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1935. What a woman!

Words by Jeroen Booij. Pictures TeamBHP, Wikipedia.

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