Emma Munz – the fast Zurich Bugatti driver

In the 1920s and early 1930s, women helped to reshape racing: the embodiment of the new woman on the racetrack too: self-confident and fashion-conscious, wild about new music, new pleasures, successful and striving for equality, cheeky, adventurous, with short hair, a bob, Perret, short hanging dresses, the first wide-cut trousers, wearing the Perret on her head and the cigarette with the cigarette holder in her mouth: Hellé-Nice, Anne-Rose Itier, Countess Margot Einsiedel, Ernes Merck, Elisabeth Junek, Lucy Schell and also Emma Munz, the Zurich woman, were the new heroines.

Emma Munz (right, in 1930), the Bugatti driver, young, short hair, fashionable Perret, fashionable sweater and wide trousers, posing on the top of the Klausen Pass. With a cigarette, of course. She belonged to the exclusive circle of Zurich Bugatti racing drivers: Willy Escher, Josef Karrer, the Krachts from Baur au Lac, the gentlemen from the Grasshoppers Club.

Emma Munz started in 1929 and 1930 in a Bugatti, a 2-liter without a compressor (Type 35 and Type 35T probably), and in 1932 with a compressor, the Type 35 C. She achieved a brilliant performance with this top-class racing car: with a time of 19:06 (All official results I have seen, mention just over 3 seconds more) she clearly beat the women's record set in 1927 by Margot Einsiedel in the powerful Steyr sports car. 22 seconds faster than the blue-blooded countess! Her 2-liter Bugatti was certainly not the strongest vehicle in the field, which made her time just over the 19-minute mark all the more impressive, amidst all the factory and male drivers.

I found another race in which she competed, a kilometer with standing start in 1929, which she ran in 42 seconds.
Hendrik Jan van der Leer found two more photographs of Emma Munz, of a kilometer with flying start. These were found on "Zwischengas" and were originally published in the magazine "Automobil-Revue" on August 29, 1930.

Emma Munz' race results, including some more results found on BugattiRegister.com:

• March 1929, km with flying start at Eaux-Mortes (Close to Geneva): 42 seconds. Class 1500-2000 cc, Bugatti
• August 17-18, 1929, Klausenpass hill climb: 22' 56''. Class 1500-2000 cc (racecars), Bugatti, 2nd
• August 1930, Klausenpass hill climb: 22' 36''. Class 2000-3000 cc (roadster), Bugatti
• August 1930, Kilometer with flying start: Average 155.8 km/h. Type 35C, Bugatti
• June 28, 2031, XII° Rheineck-Walzenhausen-Lachen (CH), race-category to 8000cc, 1st
• September 6, 1931, Kriens Eigenthal Bergrennen, Luzern (CH), race-category to 3000cc, 1st
• August 1932, Klausenpass hill climb: 19' 09.60''. Class 1500-2000 cc (racecars), Bugatti

And then there is the beautiful story of Emma Munz and Hellé-Nice. Like so many other possible episodes, it is part of the Klausen myth. So let's not take her too literally! The Frenchwoman Hellé-Nice must have been an extremely temperamental person - a versatile, egomaniacal star. When she realized with horror that Emma Munz had snatched victory in the women's race from her by almost 40 seconds, see the picture on the right, Hellé Nice in her not-just-fast-enough drive, she held nothing back: she cursed and lamented like a trooper. Only when a policeman threatened to shoot a hole in the tire of her Bugatti with his service weapon did the former revue dancer from the Paris Folies-Bergères sulk and fall silent.

Emma Munz is said to have successfully run a garage after her racing career. But even then her tracks began to be covered. In contrast to Hellé-Nice. The Frenchwoman continued to race successfully for a long time, survived a terrible accident in Sao Paolo with dead spectators and after the war was insulted by Louis Chiron in the circle of many racing and rally drivers as a Nazi collaborator. There was no evidence - but her name was tarnished, her fortune squandered by one of her lovers. She died in Nice in 1986, impoverished, bitter, forgotten.

In the end, the differences between Hellé Nice and Emma Munz were not just a case of temperament. Munz did not have the means to follow an International racing carreer; all the races in which she is known to have appeared, , were in her home-country Switzerland. These were mostly short races, hill climbs at Klausen or the kilometer. These would not call for a large support-team and lots of spare parts, as a GP race would of course require. Emma Munz, of whom we know nothing else, must have raced on a Budget.

Below: Two more photographs of Emma Munz, the source of the newspaper clipping says 1927, but this may have been later. I did not find any races of her in 1927. Both photographs are taken at the same race; she wears the same clothes, as well as a paper stating her race number: 70.
The German Text reads: "Miss E. Munz, Zürich, who with Bugatti won the special prize for fastest lady.