Jean Luc Lagardère

French engineer and industrialist whose Matra company won the 1969 world championship and Le Mans before he built the Lagardère group

Jean Luc Lagardère

French engineer and industrialist whose Matra company won the 1969 world championship and Le Mans before he built the Lagardère group

Jean Luc Lagardère trained as an engineer at Supélec and started his career at Dassault Aviation. Running Matra in the 1960s, he won fame for the company's success in Formula One and at Le Mans, and Matra's MS80, run by Ken Tyrrell's team, carried Jackie Stewart to the 1969 world title.

He went on to build one of the largest conglomerates in France. Together with Daniel Filipacchi, a friend, he bought the Hachette magazines in 1981, including a struggling Elle, which then launched in the United States and in 25 other editions abroad, and he led the mergers that created EADS, the forerunner of today's Airbus. He died on the 14th of March 2003.

Teams led

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