Etienne Brandone bodywork

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Etienne Brandone bodywork
legal form
founding 1923
resolution 1963
Seat Cannes , France
management Etienne Brandone
Branch Body shop

Carrosserie Etienne Brandone (short: Brandone ) was a French manufacturer of automobile bodies that manufactured high-quality individual items on the basis of luxury-class chassis in the period between the world wars.

Company history

The company's founder was Etienne Brandone (1893–1963), who - depending on the source - was born either in Nice or in the Italian region of Piedmont . Before the outbreak of the First World War, Brandone had completed an apprenticeship with the body manufacturer Billeter & Cartier in Lyon . In 1923 he and two brothers founded the Carrosserie Etienne Brandone company in the city of Cannes in the south of France . In 1930, Etienne Brandone's son Pierre (1914–1979) started operating.

Brandone focused from the start on the wealthy clientele of the Côte d'Azur , for whom he offered exclusive bodies. They were created on chassis from Minerva , Citroën , Rolls-Royce , Delahaye , Delage , Ballot , Hispano-Suiza , Peugeot , Alfa Romeo and Voisin . Brandone's superstructures had no unmistakable style of their own. In line with customer requirements, they often followed the designs of the renowned Parisian coachbuilders Chapron or Letourneur et Marchand . Some of Brandone's superstructures were therefore wrongly ascribed to these manufacturers.

During the Second World War, body production at Brandone declined, but did not come to a complete standstill. In 1944 Brandone manufactured the bodies for the electric vehicle Électraph , of which around 40 were made. After the end of the war, Brandone initially continued the body shop; superstructures for chassis from Delahaye, Talbot and Ford were created.

In 1952 Pierre Brandone made brief contacts in Great Britain. For nine months he worked for the well-known English body manufacturer James Young . In the 1950s, body production at Brandone slowly came to an end. After Etienne Brandone's death in 1963, operations were completely shut down.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Overview of French car body manufacturers in the interwar years at francois.vanaret.pagesperso-orange.fr (accessed on April 17, 2017).