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Bernard Cahier died in July. He suffered some sort of cranial hemorrhage, coupled to a stroke, and that was all she wrote. As Road & Track’s European correspondent in the Fifties, Bernard taught my generation of car enthusiasts about European racing and introduced us to the vivid personalities who drove the cars and were, almost to a man, personal friends of his. He was a barely acceptable writer in English, but his American wife, Joan, served as his re-write woman, typing his handwritten French manuscripts and doing her best to make the sentences parse.

As a photographer, Bernard lived by the unwritten rule of photojournalism in those days of purely mechano-optical photography: “F11, and be there.” He was always there. He never failed to get the shot. It might or might not be art, but it was an indelible record of everything that happened on those famous racing circuits among those legendary heroes and the great cars they drove.

Actually, an amateur photographer got the shot that will forever show the world who Bernard was and what he did. At Sebring in 1957 he was standing out on the very apex of a corner facing the oncoming cars like a bullfighter. Stirling Moss gestured that he needed something to drink as he went by. On the next lap, Bernard was photographed leaning out into the traffic, delivering a cold Coke to his friend Stirling. A couple of laps later, Moss swept through the corner in his Maserati and returned the empty bottle.

Elaine Bond (Mrs. John R. Bond) ran the business side of Road & Track, and Elaine adored Bernard Cahier. When she and John went to Europe, Bernard saw to it that they were treated like royalty. Bernard capered and shook his bells, and the champagne flowed. Back at the office, we proles regarded Bernard as a semi-literate toady. Henry N. Manney III was covering Europe for Gus Vignole’s MotoRacing tabloid and seemed to be hitting home runs with every paragraph, and we wanted Henry N. Manney’s stories in Road & Track.

Editor Pete Molson and Art Director Joe Parkhurst were temporarily under a cloud, because they had run a story about a Lime Rock endurance race, which they titled, “Little Le Mans for Little Sedans.” Elaine explained several times at ever-increasing volume that Road & Track never encouraged readers to mispronounce names of hallowed events like “Luh Mahnz.”

When the Bonds were again out of town, we created a fake layout, a two-page spread designed to send Elaine Bond through the overhead. Jean Behra had won the Moroccan GP and Bernard had covered the event. Bernard’s manuscripts were typed by his wife in understandable English, but his photo captions were hand-written on the backs of his photographs in his own fractured Franglais. The layout featured the obligatory photo of the race winner waving as he crossed the start/finish line, with the headline “Behra Clicks at the Grand Prix!” and beneath that, Bernard’s caption exactly as written by his own hand: “Behra, Sniling and Relax, Comes at the Winner’s Circle.” Mrs. Bond was able to control her amusement.

One day when I was director of advertising and sales promotion for Road & Track, I received a panicked phone call from Peggy Alton, our New York advertising manager. “Do we have somebody named Bernard Ca-heer working for us?” she fairly screamed down the line. “We do,” I replied, “He is our European correspondent.” She turned up the heat and yelled, “Well yesterday he told the president of Renault that Road & Track would blackball all cars built by Renault unless he gave us ‘twelve times advertising!’” Clearly, Bernard had to go. He was fired. I was fired, and wound up at Car and Driver. Joe Parkhurst was fired and started his own magazine company. Henry N. Manney III became Road & Track’s European correspondent, much to Elaine Bond’s everlasting annoyance, and helped take R&T to new editorial heights in the Sixties.

Bernard became a Goodyear PR man with a big budget and organized the International Racing Press Association (IRPA), which allowed him to have control over press credentials and gave him some clout for a time, but tobacco advertising money was changing the game, and his era was slipping away. When Bernie Ecclestone took over Formula 1, Bernard’s influence in motorsport evaporated. He had lots of friends, and a thousand old favors he could call in, but the new men, the hard men, didn’t leap to their feet when he entered the tent.

His son, Paul Henri Cahier, took up the cast-aside photojournalist mantle, and has prospered mightily as a racing photographer in his own right.

Bernard always cultivated senior executives in the automobile industry, and I vividly remember GM president Ed Cole and design vice president Bill Mitchell pulling out all the stops for Bernard’s visits to Detroit. Secret studios were thrown open. Prototype cars were made available. Fancy dinners were organized. One of the executives Bernard Cahier had courted in Europe and the United States sent me an e-mail yesterday. It said, “His passing is very sad. He did not age well, nor do well, once his supporters retired or died.”

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Magazine Issue: Winding Road Issue 37