Dufaux et Cie

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Dufaux from 1904 in the Cité de l'Automobile - Musée National - Collection Schlumpf

Dufaux et Cie was a Swiss manufacturer of automobiles .

Company history

The brothers Charles Dufaux and Frédéric Dufaux began producing automobiles in Geneva in 1904 . Charles and Frédéric Dufaux were cousins ​​of Henri and Armand Dufaux , who had founded the motorcycle manufacturer Motosacoche five years earlier .

In 1907 the production of Dufaux ended.

vehicles

The first car was a racing car for the Gordon Bennett Cup in 1904 , which was equipped with one of the first eight-cylinder in - line engines for road vehicles. With a displacement of 12,763 cm³ , it almost exactly achieved the volume of the later Bugatti Type 41 "Royale" . This was followed by other racing cars with four-cylinder and eight-cylinder engines with a displacement of up to 26,400 cm³. Roadworthy vehicles were available from 1905. In that year the 35 CV model with a four-cylinder engine and an eight-cylinder model were presented. In 1906 the four-cylinder models 16 CV with 4000 cm³ displacement and 35/40 CV were added.

One vehicle of this brand can be viewed in the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne and in the collection of the Cité de l'Automobile in Mulhouse (France).

Record attempts

The vehicle, built in 1904, had an eight-cylinder in-line engine with a capacity of 12,763 cm³ and an output of around 90 hp at 1200 rpm. Due to a defect on the front axle, the car could not start at the Gordon Bennett Cup. In the autumn of 1904, this vehicle set a record over one kilometer with a flying start at 115 km / h in Geneva .

For the Gordon Bennet race in 1905, Dufaux built three racing cars with a huge four-cylinder engine. A vehicle was delivered to the Englishman Charles Stewart Rolls who wanted to race with it. Due to various defects, the car was sent back to Switzerland.

construction

The engine had two blocks of two cylinders each with a bore of 225 mm and a stroke of 166 mm. The displacement was 26.4 liters. The valves were arranged upright on the side, ignition was carried out with a magneto. The power was 150 hp at 1000 rpm. Instead of a conventional cooler, numerous copper pipes with cooling fins were attached to the cylinder heads; the cooling functioned as a thermosiphon cooling .

The power was transmitted to the rear wheels via a metal cone clutch and a three-speed gearbox with chains. The chassis, built from U-profiles, had a strongly cranked front axle, which was manufactured from chrome-nickel steel according to a Dufaux patent and which, like the rear axle, were connected to the chassis with semi-elliptical springs. For weight reasons, the vehicle was only allowed to weigh 1000 kg, there was no body; the simple seats for the driver and front passenger were attached to a chassis cross member.

Record run

Record vehicle 1905

On November 15, 1905, the Dufaux brothers with their racing car and a few companions came to kilometer 49 on the road between Salon-de-Provence and Arles to set a new record. In the third attempt, Frédéric Dufaux reached a speed of 156.522 km / h over a kilometer. Six weeks later this record was set again by the Frenchman Victor Hémery with a Darracq with 176.476 km / h.

literature

  • Harald H. Linz, Halwart Schrader : The great automobile encyclopedia. BLV, Munich 1986, ISBN 3-405-12974-5
  • George Nick Georgano : Cars. Encyclopédie complète. 1885 à nos jours. Courtille, 1975 (French)
  • Ernest Schmid: Swiss cars. Swiss automobile designs from 1868 to the present day. Auto-Jahr, Lausanne 1978, ISBN 2-88001-058-6
  • Griffith Borgeson: Bugatti by Borgeson - The dynamics of mythology (1981), Osprey Publishing Limited, London ISBN 0-85045-414-X (English)

Web links

Commons : Dufaux vehicles  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Martine Piguet: Dufaux. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
  2. ^ Borgeson: Bugatti by Borgeson - The dynamics of mythology (1981), p. 137
  3. ↑ The forgotten world record . Automobil und Motorrad Chronik 9/1975, p. 16 f.