Gérard Marie Antoine Welter (20 October 1942 – 31 January 2018) spent almost five decades at Peugeot, joining the company at 18 and serving as Director of the Peugeot Design Center from 1998 to 2007. He designed or contributed to a range of Peugeot models including the 205, the 205 GTi, the 205 T16 rally car, the 405, the 604, the RCZ, and the 905 sportscar that won the FIA Sportscar World Championship for Makes in 1992.
In 1969, Welter co-founded the WM motor racing company with his wife Rachel and his Peugeot colleague Michel Meunier, with the aim of designing prototype cars for endurance racing. The cars were largely built by enthusiastic part-timers working in Welter's own garage. Peugeot never formally sponsored the team but allowed Welter access to its wind tunnel and engine development facilities, which were used to develop an endurance version of the PRV V6 engine produced jointly by Peugeot, Renault, and Volvo.
WM appeared at the 24 Hours of Le Mans from 1976 through 1989. The team's best overall result came in 1980, when Guy Fréquelin and Roger Dorchy finished fourth outright. Aware that an overall victory was beyond WM's resources, Welter pursued a different objective: aerodynamic refinement for maximum straight-line speed on the uninterrupted Mulsanne Straight.
The team's most historically significant moment came in 1988. Under an initiative known as Project 400, Welter set out to build the first car capable of reaching 400 km/h during the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The resulting WM P88-Peugeot used a low-drag aerodynamic configuration achieved by repositioning the radiators and intercoolers and introducing novel ducting to eliminate conventional frontal air intake. The car carried almost no downforce.
Driven by Roger Dorchy, the P88 achieved a timed speed of 407 km/h (approximately 253 mph) on the Mulsanne Straight during the 1988 race. However, as a loyal Peugeot employee, Welter chose to report the figure as 405 km/h to coincide with the model number of the recently launched Peugeot 405. The car — entry number 51, shared by Dorchy, Jean-Daniel Raulet, and Claude Haldi — had qualified 36th due to persistent engine problems in practice, and spent more than three hours in the pits during the race dealing with turbocharger, cooling, and electrical failures before retiring.
The record was effectively made permanent in 1990 when two chicanes were added to the Mulsanne Straight, reducing the maximum achievable speed on the now-shorter sections.
After Michel Meunier left the project at the end of 1989, Welter established Welter Racing (WR) in Thorigny-sur-Marne in 1990 and continued in partnership with Rachel and his father, Julien Welter. The team competed at Le Mans from 1992 through 2006, and made a final Le Mans appearance in 2010 with the WR LMP2008 fitted with a Zytek engine.
The team's Le Mans record under the WR banner included a class win in 1993, a third-place class result in 1994, and a front-row lockout in 1995 that triggered a regulatory change. In 1993, the WR LM93-Peugeot driven by Patrick Gonin, Alain Lamouille, and Bernard Santal won the C3 class. In 1995, William David put a WR LM94 on outright pole position with a lap of 3 minutes 46.05 seconds — an average speed of 216.589 km/h — while Patrick Gonin qualified the second car alongside him to give Welter Racing the entire front row. Gonin then set the fastest lap of the race. The pole lap prompted the ACO to revise its qualifying regulations for 1996.
On 3 May 1997, twenty-one-year-old Sébastien Enjolras was killed during pre-qualifying for the 1997 24 Hours of Le Mans when the rear bodywork of his WR LM97-Peugeot detached after the Arnage corner, sending the car airborne over the safety barriers. The car overturned and caught fire. Gérard and Rachel Welter immediately withdrew all their entries for the race as a mark of respect.
Among the drivers who raced for Welter during the WM and WR years were Thierry Boutsen, Didier Pironi, Bertrand Gachot, Jean Rondeau, and Didier Theys.
Gérard Welter died on 31 January 2018 in Jossigny, Seine-et-Marne, aged 75.