Delaunay-Belleville

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SA of the Delaunay-Belleville automobile
legal form Société Anonyme
founding 1903
resolution 1948
Seat St. Denis , France
Branch Automobile manufacturer

Delaunay-Belleville from 1907–1908
Delaunay-Belleville from 1914–1917
A Delaunay Belleville from the fleet of Tsar Nicholas II, around 1909
Share over 100 francs in the SA of the Delaunay-Belleville automobile on April 29, 1924

The SA des Automobiles Delaunay-Belleville was a French automobile manufacturer of luxury cars. The factory was in St. Denis .

description

At the beginning of the 20th century, they were among the French dream cars and perhaps the most prestigious vehicles in the world. They were driven in the era in which wealthy industrialists, bankers and monarchs had a chauffeur who took care of the daily maintenance of the vehicle as well as the exhausting driving on the mostly less than perfect roads.

Louis Delaunay and Marius Barbarou founded the company in September 1903 as an independent company of the main company Delaunay-Belleville, which had existed since the 1860s . Barbarous family owned a steam pressure boiler company in St. Denis. The design of the boiler influenced the company. The same care that was required in boiler construction was also applied to the construction, the first-class materials and the handwork. Marius had experience through his work with Clément , Lorraine-Dietrich and Benz . He was responsible for construction and design. It wasn't until 1904 that Delaunay-Belleville produced the first car. The round radiator grille became characteristic of the brand .

While the first models were still powered by four-cylinder engines, most of the following models received six- cylinder engines . The H4 model was a sedan with a 3600 cc six-cylinder engine. The HB 6 from 1911 was powered by a six-cylinder engine with a displacement of five liters and an output of 30 hp. Because of their low vibration levels , the Delaunay-Belleville cars were considered unusually quiet in their era. While most cars of the time had a drip lubrication system, the Delaunay-Belleville brand vehicles were among the first to have a system of pumps that brought the oil under pressure to the lubrication points for lubrication.

Delaunay-Belleville vehicles already received their unusual body from the later famous coachbuilders D'Ieteren , Carrosserie Labourdette and Mühlbacher , which made them “faces in the crowd”.

Delaunay-Belleville were among the favorite cars of Tsar Nicholas II. Also the Greek King George I and the Spanish monarch Alphonso XIII. owned Delaunay-Belleville vehicles.

After the First World War , the identical engine type was continued to be used in 1919, but the model line was modernized. At the same time, a 12-CV model P4B with a four-cylinder engine was introduced in 1922 , which was largely based on a Renault design . To stand out from the average production in 1931 were two large chassis with American Continental - rows - eight-cylinder engines with displacements of 4.5 liters and 4 presented.

In the late 1920s, the Delaunay-Belleville lost their prestige and turned to the construction of trucks and military vehicles. The era of cars that were usually operated by drivers was coming to an end. The younger owners wanted and were able to drive themselves, caring for the vehicles was no longer so time-consuming and even the rich could occasionally no longer afford a driver after the global economic crisis .

The last cars from Delaunay-Belleville were a series of copies of the 13-CV mid- size Mercedes-Benz 230, which were presented as the RI6 with independent suspension on all four wheels. They were produced until 1948 when the Rovin factory was taken over and vehicles of that brand were made after that.

Trivia

With a Delaunay-Belleville 12 CV (model 1910), the famous French anarchist criminal Jules Bonnot, together with his accomplices, used an automobile in a bank robbery for the first time in history in December 1911.

literature

  • Harald H. Linz, Halwart Schrader : The International Automobile Encyclopedia . United Soft Media Verlag, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-8032-9876-8 .
  • George Nick Georgano (Editor-in-Chief): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile. Volume 1: A – F. Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 . (English)
  • George Nick Georgano: Cars. Encyclopédie complète. 1885 à nos jours. Courtille, Paris 1975. (French)
  • Pierre-Henri, Philippe and François Richer: La Delaunay-Belleville (1904–1947), un fleuron de l'automobile. Les Editions Page de Garde, Elbeuf.

Web links

Commons : Delaunay-Belleville  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files