Louisette (right) with Annie Soisbault and Germaine Rouault
Louisette Texier was an Armenian-French driver and rally navigator in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Her ten-year driving career began when she was in her mid-forties and running her own clothes shop. She had been born in central Turkey to Armenian parents and her birth name was Arpine Hovanessian. Evacuated to Greece and then to Marseille, she escaped the 1915 Armenian genocide which claimed her father. Her mother also survived, but the two did not meet one another again until Arpine was an adult. At the age of 15, she left school and became a showgirl in Paris. This may well have been when she changed her name. She would have been a contemporary to the likes of Helle Nice and perhaps saw her compete in the Coupe des Artistes. A much later meeting with Grand Prix driver Jean Behra during a visit to Montlhery in 1955 is said to have been her inspiration to take up motorsport herself.
An ambitious competitor nicknamed the Bulldozer, her first major rally was the 1958 Acropolis, which she tackled in a Simca Aronde Montlhery model. This was a car she was already familiar with, having co-driven for Germaine Rouault in one for the 1956 Monte Carlo Rally. She had raced a slightly different model on track during the same season, finishing sixth in class in the Coupes de Vitesse at Montlhery. Later in the year, she was thirteenth in the Coupe de Salon, held at the same circuit.
The 1956 races were the only times she took to the circuits for dedicated races, but she got more experience of the French tracks during the Tour de France. She entered four times between 1961 and 1964, as both co-driver to Annie Soisbault and named driver. In 1961, she drove an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, and in 1964, a Jaguar MkII. Her co-driver both times was Marie-Louise Mermod of Switzerland. On the other two occasions she navigated for Annie Soisbault, also in a Jaguar.
The Monte Carlo Rally was another favourite. She first entered in 1959, still driving a Simca Aronde. Louisette and co-driver Francoise Archambault narrowly missed the cut to enter the final leg and finished 106th overall. She switched to a Renault Dauphine in 1960, but she and Helene Cherret did not finish. Driving an Alfa Romeo Giulietta and Renault 8 respectively, she entered again in 1961 and 1964.
As well as events, Louisette was quite loyal to team-mates. Between 1960 and 1963, she co-drove for Annie Soisbault in the Tour de France and in French rallies such as the 1960 Stuttgart-Charbonnieres event, where they shared an Alfa Romeo. Marie-Louise (or Mary Lou) Mermod was another regular colleague; she navigated for Louisette in the 1962 Monte and the 1964 Tour de France, then Louisette returned the favour for the Geneva Rally in 1964. They were 30th in an Alfa Romeo.
Louisette was also a participant in the Paris-St. Raphaël womens' rally, in which she used a Renault Dauphine in 1962.
Her last rally was the Rallye du Maroc in 1968. She drove a Renault 8 Gordini but joined a lengthy list of non-finishers.
She died aged 108 in 2021. In her final years, she achieved some fame in France due to her great age, adventurous life and wartime heroics in the French resistance, helping to hide Jewish families. She worked in womenswear retail until she was 92 and enjoyed karting with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren when she was even older.
For an interview with Louisette as an old lady, click here.
Image copyright Le Monde