What was special about Le Mans in 1963? Simply that it was the first time that a gas turbine car has taken part in a major race. It was the Rover BRM, but it was unclassified alongside the others on engine type. It had to start a minute after the others and carried the number 00.

It would have finished 7th, behind the 6 Ferrari cars if it had been classified. 

It was also the first race where grid position was by practice lap times and not engine size, possibly pointless as at the start all the drivers ran across the road and jumped into their cars.
 

Our usual group (Peter Storey, Cyril Fletcher and  John Stockwell) made the trip in my 2CV. In those days the track was prepared for the race but the public were free to drive around it the day before the race, together with some of the competing cars being race tuned.

This was quite a spectacle with a mixture of ordinary traffic mixed in with boy racers and proper race cars. After a couple of laps (my heavily laden 2CV was probably the slowest vehicle) so we parked up on a tight bend and watched the action.