Vanvooren bodywork

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1911
1934
1937

Carrosserie Vanvooren (the incorrect spelling of Van Vooren is often used) was a French body construction company based in the north-western Parisian suburb of Courbevoie , which from around 1860 initially produced carriages , then from 1900 increasingly exclusive automobile bodies for luxury cars. Production ran until 1950.

Vanvooren developed and patented pioneering methods in car body construction that were used worldwide. In the 1930s the company was closely associated with Hispano-Suiza , Bugatti , Rolls-Royce and Bentley .

Manufacturing took place in 10-18 and 29-33 rue Pierre l'Homme, Courbevoie, with a further workshop in 108 rue de la Garenne, Courbevoie. The Vanvoorens showroom was located at 33 Rue Marbeuf, Paris.

history

1888 to 1921

Marius Joseph Daste 1935
1911 Panhard et Levassor X14 Vanvooren
1927 Hispano-Suiza H6C Vanvooren

Achille Vanvooren began building carriages in 1888 in the north-western Parisian suburb of Courbevoie after completing an apprenticeship in his father's company. A few years later, there were already over 100 models to choose from in the showroom in Rue Marbeuf, both from our own production and from third-party brands from the most important manufacturers. From around 1900 Vanvooren also dealt with the construction of bodywork for automobiles and within a short time it developed an excellent reputation. The oldest vehicles with Vanvooren bodies that have survived today are a Mercedes 38 / 70HP from 1911, delivered to Samuel Colt , the heir to the American arms dynasty, a Panhard & Levassor Type X14 20HP from 1912, and a Hotchkiss 55HP Roadster of the same Vintage. In 1921 the founder withdrew from his business and handed it over to his previous technical director Marius Joseph Daste (* 1892, Lyon ).

1922 to 1929

In 1923, Marius Daste acquired the license to manufacture the light English Weymann body , a vehicle body with a wooden frame and synthetic leather cover , with which various Hispano-Suiza H6 , Ballot 2LTS , Voisin C11 , and Bugatti T43 and T44 were equipped.

Also the first Rolls-Royce to be bodied by Vanvooren, a New Phantom with chassis no. 27EF, went to a British customer in 1927 with such a setup. 1929 became a milestone in the company's history: with the help of his new partner Romée de Prandières, MJ Daste developed and patented the flexible, metal- reinforced body structure for automobiles, semi-rigid, using Silentbloc rubber isolators from the neighboring company Repusseau et Cie. (75 Rue Danton, Levallois-Perret ). These connected the massive steel ladder frame (the chassis) with the wooden frame for the construction. The system successfully eliminated the previously unavoidable squeaking and rattling, as well as the cracking of the previous body structures.

1930 to 1939

1934 Hispano-Suiza K6 Vanvooren
1935 Alvis Speed ​​20 DHC Vanvooren
1935 Bugatti T57C Vanvooren
1937 Hispano-Suiza K6 Vanvooren Pillarless Saloon
1938 Bentley 4 1/4 ltr. Coupe Vanvooren
1939 Rolls-Royce Wraith Faux Cabriolet Vanvooren
1939 Bugatti T57C Cabriolet Vanvooren
1939 Bugatti T57C Atalante Vanvooren

Shown for the first time at the Paris Motor Show in 1930 and viewed there as the most important and most innovative innovation, shortly afterwards over 40 European coachbuilders took over the license for the use of this Vanvooren / Daste patent. At the London Olympia Motor Show of the same year, Vanvoorens England agent J. Smith & Co. presented three vehicles of this type on Delage chassis, all of which were painted two-tone in black and silver, which made a great impression. The patent was marketed in England by the Silent Travel company and used by the majority of British manufacturers.

In addition to the high manufacturing quality, Vanvooren's trademark was the stylistic combination of conservative representation with formal elegance, a creative tightrope walk that the designers of the house, in the opinion of their customers, have consistently mastered.

Hispano-Suiza

Vanvooren worked closely with Hispano-Suiza, the epitome of French luxury cars, whose manufacture was just a few hundred meters away in Bois-Colombes in the north-west of Paris. The fruitful relationship between the two companies is comparable to the close relationship between Rolls-Royce and Park Ward in England. In 1932 MJ Daste moved to Hispano-Suiza as director of automobile production (new partners at Vanvooren were Georges Guillemet in 1934, Raymond Chauvière in 1938), and the close relationships intensified. From 1932 Vanvooren dressed more than a third of all Hispano-Suiza types HS26 , K6 and J12 in various body shapes.

Bugatti

At the same time, Romée de Prandières intensified the close proximity to Bugatti, as the latter was close friends with the head of Bugatti's Paris representative, Dominique Lamberjack Jr. Numerous bodies of types 43, 44 , 46 (including the vehicles presented by Bugatti at the Paris Motor Show in 1929), 49 , 50 (including the torpedoes for the 24 Hours of Le Mans 1931) 55 and 57 were made in Courbevoie.

In addition to four T57S convertibles (out of a total of 20 Vanvooren cars on T57 chassis), Vanvooren also produced a T57C convertible (chassis 57.808 / C) commissioned by the French government as a wedding present for the future Persian Shah Reza Pahlavi . It is based on a design by Figoni & Falaschi for a Delahaye 165, which in its exaltation is quite unusual for Vanvooren's otherwise rather reserved style.

Other French manufacturers

Chassis of other French luxury car manufacturers such as Panhard & Levassor, Delage , Delahaye and Voisin were also provided with Vanvooren bodies, as well as vehicles from the brands Ballot, De Dion , Delaunay-Belleville , Lorraine-Dietrich , Peugeot , Renault , Sizaire , Unic and others. A planned long-term collaboration with Citroën , for whose type C6 at least 79 bodies were manufactured, did not materialize due to a minimum purchase requirement of 100 chassis.

Unique pieces

As sensational individual pieces, an Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 in sports version was created in 1933 , and a Mercedes 500K Coach in 1934 (individual sources also mention a 1936 540K ). The year 1935 brought a Cadillac V8 Cabriolet and an Alvis Speed ​​20 Cabriolet, which the English company from Coventry presented as a debut on the French market at the Paris Salon. Six convertibles based on the Graham-Paige “Sharknose” were built in 1938/1939. The Mercedes and the Alvis have been preserved.

Rolls Royce

For the British luxury brands Rolls-Royce and Bentley (since 1931 under the management of Rolls-Royce) Vanvooren manufactured most of the cars sold in France in the 1930s. There was also a personal connection in the background: Walter Sleator , head of Franco-Britannic Autos Ltd. in Paris, the general importer of Rolls-Royce and Bentley for France, Vanvoorens was sales manager in the Paris exhibition house in the 1920s.

Rolls-Royce was very impressed with the design and manufacturing methods Vanvooren used for their chassis. The decision was made to convert an already finished Bentley 3½ liter (chassis B187BL) to another patented Vanvooren specialty, a so-called pillarless saloon - a filigree construction without a B-pillar with doors opening in opposite directions, which made entry extremely easy. This car was then made available to the leading British coachbuilders as an object of study and study.

Rolls-Royce also initiated a collaboration between its main body shop, Park Ward, and Vanvooren, with the task of developing manufacturing methods for car bodies that should be as light and resistant as possible despite the use of steel. In total, Rolls-Royce commissioned Vanvooren to build 16 vehicles, including four 20 / 25HP cars , a New Phantom, two Phantom II , two Phantom III and seven Wraith . Four other cars were subsequently re-bodyworked by Vanvooren, a 20HP , two Phantom II and one Phantom III.

Bentley

The relationship with Bentley was even more intense. A total of 71 chassis (16 times 3 ½ liters, 46 times 4 ¼ liters , 7 times Mark V and 2 times Mark VI ) went to Paris to be dressed, making Vanvooren by far the most important bodybuilder for luxury sports cars from England on the entire continent.

Vanvooren's development department also worked closely with Bentley, as it did with Hispano-Suiza. The successor to the 4 ¼ liter planned for 1940, the Mark V "Corniche", designed by Georges Paulin , was to be mass-produced at Vanvooren in Paris. Until the outbreak of the Second World War , seven chassis were delivered and four bodies produced. The prototype chassis 14-BV and chassis B12AW were still completed. 14-BV had a serious accident on a test drive in France. While the body was being repaired at the Rolls-Royce test site in Châteauroux , the chassis was sent back to the factory in Derby . The remaining six Mark V were now under construction there according to Vanvooren's plans. They were to be equipped with a newly developed eight-cylinder in-line engine and were originally to take part in the Le Mans 24-hour race in 1940. It never came to that. The repaired Vanvooren body was completely destroyed in a German air raid while it was being transported to Derby in the port of Dieppe .

1940 to 1950

The Vanvooren factory building in Courbevoie was badly damaged by Allied bombing in 1943. In the process, all internal written records were lost, so that technical information on the vehicles produced can only be found at the contracting chassis manufacturers. Work at the old location could not be resumed until 1947 in a greatly reduced form.

The conditions in the luxury class automobile construction had changed fundamentally after the Second World War. The cooperation partners of yore had either relocated their field of business (Hispano-Suiza) or had started to mass-produce their bodies themselves (Rolls-Royce, Bentley). With the exception of a few cars for the also disappearing luxury brand Delahaye and individual private special orders (including a Bentley Mk VI Cabriolet, Chassis B53BG, a Bentley Mk VI Coupé, Chassis B332LEY) and conversions of older vehicles, there was nothing more to do - the gates closed in 1950 in Courbevoie.

Vanvooren today

Nothing is known about Vanvooren's exact production figures because the factory documents were lost during the war. In conclusion, based on the orders from the automobile companies that can still be found, the continuous body numbers, as well as the direct comparison with the competitors at the time, a number of around 3,000 units that left the workshops in the 50 years from 1900 to 1950 can be considered realistic. The peak of productivity was in the 20s and 30s, when Vanvooren enjoyed the highest reputation, especially in terms of manufacturing.

Today around 120-150 cars from Courbevoie still exist in museums and private collections. These include almost 40 Bugatti and Hispano-Suiza each, as well as around 25 Bentley. Since they were counted among the crowns of automobile construction from their delivery and treated accordingly, almost all of these vehicles have a complete history.

The Concours d'Elegance at Pebble Beach / California / USA , the world's most important event of its kind for classic vehicles, honored Vanvooren in 2013 with its own special show - five Hispano-Suiza, two Bentley and one Delage were shown.

Many of the specimens known today are in museums and collections in the USA . A facility that was specifically dedicated to the vehicles of the Vanvooren body shop was located in Germany: the Volante collection in Kirchzarten near Freiburg . With a total of nine exhibits, the world's largest group of Vanvooren vehicles was gathered there.

Efforts are currently underway by an initiative with the support of the French government to have the creations of the country's most important pre-war body shops, including Vanvooren, classified as World Heritage Sites.

literature

  • Serge Bellu: Encyclopédie de la Carrosserie Francaise. ETAI 2011, ISBN 978-2-7268-9562-7 .
  • Nick Georgano (Edit.): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile - Coachbuilding. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers 2001, ISBN 1-57958-367-9 .
  • Ernest Schmid d'Andrès: Hispano Suiza. J.-P. Barthelemy 1997, ISBN 2-909413-23-3 .
  • Pierre-Yves Laugier: Bugatti, Les 57 Sport. Bugattibooks, ISBN 2-9700442-0-X .
  • Neill Fraser & Tomas Knapek: Bentley Beauty. The Silent Sports Car Club 2004, ISBN 0-9547462-0-1 .
  • Bernard L. King: The Derby Bentleys. Complete Classics 2000, ISBN 0-9565671-0-X .
  • Exhibition catalog: The Bugattis. of the Museum of Art and Industry Hamburg 1983.
  • Exhibition catalog: Pebble Beach, Concours d'Elegance, August 18, 2013.
  • Collection Guide: Volante of the Volante Collection Kirchzarten 2015.

Web links

Commons : Vanvooren  - collection of images, videos and audio files