Gerard Welter has passed…..the man who created the 205 GTI
Car designer and motorsports icon, Gerard Welter has died aged at the age of 75. So who is Gerard Welter? Well, this is the man who designed the inspirational 205 GTi and led the Peugeot design team for a decade until he retired in 2007. Welter joined the company at age 18. Hi very first high-profile project was the Peugeot 205 GTI and then he went on to rework it to be , and then into the awesome 205 T16 Group B rally car.
Gerard also had his own Le Mans team, ‘WM’ which he partners with another designer. Later the team was renamed ‘WR’ for Welter Racing, which he ran together with his wife Rachel.
Gerard’s WM and WR prototypes, built mostly in his garage at home by a team of part-timers started as prototypes which were raced at Le Mans from 1976 to 1989 with the aim of hitting the highest possible speed down the Mulsanne Straight in the days when it was uninterrupted by chicanes.
He returned in the 1990s under the Welter Racing banner with a series of lightweight open-top prototypes which got him pole positions. The Peugeot-powered WMs were very ofetn the fastest in a straight line at Le Mans and one of his cars claimed a record for the highest top speed on the Mulsanne that became set in stone when the chicanes went in for 1990.
Meanwhile Welter continued his day job with Peugeot as design director until his retirement in 2007.
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