Van den Plas body
| Van den Plas | |
|---|---|
| legal form | |
| founding | 1870 |
| resolution | 1949 |
| Seat | Brussels , later Antwerp , Belgium |
| Number of employees | 400 (1908) |
| Branch | Body shop |
The Van den Plas car body was a Belgian body construction company based in Brussels , later in Antwerp , which in the first third of the 20th century mainly manufactured individual bodies for luxury cars. Regardless of the similarity of the name, there are only few points of contact with the British bodywork manufacturer Vanden Plas (England) , which became part of the BMC Group after the Second World War .
Company history
In 1870 the company was founded as a cartwright under the name Van den Plas or Van der Plas in Brussels. Later, in addition to wagon wheels, parts for axles were also manufactured. 14 years later the company moved to Antwerp and from then on also engaged in wagon making. The cartwright made complete carriages . In 1890 a second workshop was added at the old location in Brussels. The wagons of this brand were known in Belgium and beyond as being of particularly high quality.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the company, now run by Guillaume Van den Plas, began manufacturing car bodies. Client were z. B. Berliet , De Dion-Bouton , Germain , Métallurgique or Packard . In 1908 the companies already had 400 employees. 300 bodies in one-off or small series were manufactured per year and z. B. from 1906 also exported to Great Britain . The design for a convertible, which Van den Plas realized on a Packard chassis in 1927 , was adopted by the American body manufacturer Waterhouse and made the basis of a series called Victoria Convertible . Temporarily Van den Plas worked with the British Reading -based operating Samuel Elliott & Sons together.
The Belgian factories continued to build car bodies until 1949.
Relations with Great Britain and France
Vanden Plas in Great Britain
Van den Plas exported car bodies to Great Britain since 1906. The work of the Belgian company enjoyed an exceptionally good reputation there. In 1913 Warwick Wright and Théo Masui founded Vanden Plas (England) Ltd. , which was supposed to manufacture bodies in Great Britain under a Belgian license. The British company, which consistently used a slightly modified form of writing, was financially and organizationally independent of the Belgian company. Vanden Plas in Great Britain was closely associated with Bentley in the 1920s, and in the following decade the company also dressed chassis for Armstrong Siddeley , Daimler Lagonda , Rolls-Royce and Talbot. After the Second World War, Vanden Plas was taken over by Austin and, after the company had initially produced large sedans on Austin chassis, was merged with the BMC group in the 1960s , which, like its successors, repeats the brand name as part of Badge Engineering Used for luxuriously equipped versions of conventional Jaguar, Daimler or Rover models, but also for standard vehicles with special decorations.
Van den Plas in France
In 1924, Guillaume's son Willy founded a branch in France , which was based in Paris and called Willy Van den Plas . The company existed until 1935.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Nick Georgano (editor in chief): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile - Coachbuilding . Chicago / London 2001 (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers) ISBN 1-57958-367-9 , pp. 330 f.
