Cadillac had a respectable weekend at the latest running of the 2024 Hours of Le Mans on Saturday and Sunday, with one of its two V-Series R prototypes placing seventh in the elite Hypercar class. The other retired with an apparent oil leak.
But it wasn’t the brand’s most historically important Le Mans performance. That likely came in 1950. That year, privateer racer Briggs Cunningham entered a pair of Cadillac Series 61 Coupes. The French nicknamed them Petit Pataud (“little clumsy”) and Le Monstre.
Le Monstre is the one that left a mark on history. Cunningham worked with an engineer from the Grumman aircraft company to completely redesign its body. Le Monstre contributed a lot to the modern understanding of car aerodynamics.
It placed 11th, just behind the unmodified Petit Pataud, because it crashed into a sandbank and had to be slowly dug out and repaired. But the sleek, fighter jet menace of the V-Series R and other modern Le Mans Hypercars owe a debt to Cunningham’s monstrous experiment.
Very Limited-Edition Salute Models
Cadillac chose the 2024 running of the Le Mans race to unveil limited-edition salutes to those classics. Both are Blackwing sedans modified by the company’s Collector Series shop.
Cadillac hasn’t disclosed pricing. The current CT5-V Blackwing starts in the mid-$90,000 range, and the CT4-V Blackwing in the mid-$60,000 range. But their rarity means dealers routinely charge higher prices. A set of limited editions like these will likely carry much higher sticker prices.
The modern Le Monstre is a 2025 CT5-V Blackwing, with that car’s 668-horsepower supercharged 6.2-liter V8. “In homage to the 101st anniversary of the first 24 hours of the original Le Mans race, production of the Le Monstre edition is limited to 101 vehicles,” Cadillac says.
The modern Monstre gets “a Phantom Blue interior and Santorini accents in your choice of Sky Cool Gray or Jet Black,” with the stylized racing “9” of the 1955 Monstre embossed on the seats. The numeral also appears on a 3D-printed shifter medallion. The blue carries over to the outside, where it appears on royal blue brake calipers and blue carbon fiber aero elements.
The 2025 version of Petit Pataud is a CT4-V Blackwing, using that car’s 472-hp twin-turbocharged V6. It gets blue-over-black upholstery with Little Clumsy’s racing “3” on the seatbacks and shifter. Cadillac will build just 50 copies.
Each has its serialization number subtly marked low on the door.
