The streets around the newly constructed Garage Banville in Paris’s 17th Arrondissement were and remain narrow, busy, and flat – unsuitable for hillclimbs and head-to-head races alike. Yet in February 1927, spectators flocked to the garage to see a race, perhaps the only organized motorsports event to leave skidmarks up the ramps of an inner-city parking garage.

In those years before the onset of the Great Depression, the rich had taken to flaunting their wealth in ever more conspicuous displays, including fast and expensive cars. In a city like Paris, that wasn’t exactly easy, so a group of schoolmates, among them Christian Dauvergne, came up with the idea of building a parking garage that would cater to the wealthy car owners of Paris – “a garage in which the wealthy could store their exquisite luxury cars which, at the same time, would double up as a sports and social club,” Joe Saward wrote in “The Grand Prix Saboteurs.”

Rich, early motorists had some funny ideas about auto culture.