Automobiles Léon Bollée

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Automobiles Léon Bollée (1895–1924)
Morris Motors Ltd., Usines Léon Bollée (1925–1931)
Société Nouvelle Léon Bollée (1931–1933)
legal form Société
founding 1896
resolution 1933
Seat Le Mans , France
management
  • 1895-1913
  • 1913-1924
  • Mrs. Bollée
  • Henri Péan
  • Mr. Faivre
  • 1925-1931
Branch Automobile manufacturer

The best-known model by Léon Bollée: The Voiturette , eponymous for many small vehicles made in France.

Automobiles Léon Bollée was a French manufacturer of automobiles .

Company history

Léon Bollée (1870–1913) founded the company in Le Mans in 1895 and began producing automobiles. The brand name was Léon Bollée . Darracq was a licensee .

CC Worthington operated the Worthington Automobile Company in New York City . He imported Léon Bollée vehicles from 1904 to 1905 and marketed them as Worthington-Bollée .

Production fell after the First World War . After the death of Léon Bollée in 1913, his widow ran the company together with Henri Péan and a Mr. Faivre. In 1925 the Morris Motor Company took over the company and renamed it Morris Motors Ltd., Usines Léon Bollée . The new brand name was Morris-Léon Bollée . In 1931 it was renamed Société Nouvelle Léon Bollée again . The brand name was again Léon Bollée . Production ended in 1933.

vehicles

Automobiles Léon Bollée (1895–1924)

Léon Bollée 20 CV from 1904
Léon Bollée G 1 from 1911

In 1895 the first vehicle was a Tricar , which was called Voiturette . The term voiturette was later used by many manufacturers for small vehicles. Various air-cooled single-cylinder engines with a displacement of 640 cm³, 692 cm³, 825 cm³ and 995 cm³ , which developed between 2 and 3 hp , were available for the drive . This model series was discontinued in 1899. In 1900 vehicles with four wheels followed, which had water-cooled single - cylinder engines. In 1902, models with four-cylinder engines and chain drives added to the range. These were the 18/24 CV with 3920 cm³ displacement, the 24/30 CV with 4500 cm³ displacement, the 35/45 CV with 7360 cm³ displacement and the 40/50 CV with 8500 cm³ displacement. From 1908 the engine power was transferred to the rear axle by means of a cardan shaft . In 1910, three four-cylinder models from the 12 CV with 2380 cm³ displacement to the 24/30 CV and three six-cylinder models from the 18 CV with 3570 cm³ displacement to the 75 CV with 11940 cm³ displacement were presented at the Paris Motor Show .

After the First World War, the four-cylinder Type H model with a displacement of 2612 cm³ and, from 1922, a six-cylinder model with a displacement of 3918 cm³. The latter model had Perrot four-wheel brakes.

Morris-Léon Bollée (1925–1931)

Morris-Léon Bollée

The new base model 12 CV , also called MLB , was an English construction. Hotchkiss supplied the four-cylinder engine with 2402 cm³ displacement and OHV valve control . A six-cylinder model was also on offer. The price for the chassis was 26,000 French francs . There was also a model with an eight-cylinder in - line engine with a capacity of 3072 cc at a price of 71,300 francs for the chassis. The chassis and engine were from Wolseley Motor Company .

A Morris Léon Bollée travels the northern Chinese protagonist in the novel The Lover of North China by Marguerite Duras . The novel is set in the Mekong Delta and Saigon ( French Indochina ) around 1930 .

Société Nouvelle Léon Bollée (1931–1933)

Now only one model was created, the ELB . It was equipped with a four-cylinder engine with a displacement of 1997 cc. This model was also made as a delivery van and exported to England . The six- and eight-cylinder models were also still on sale, but found no buyers. These are likely to have been leftover vehicles that were produced in stock during the Morris-Léon-Bollée era.

Production figures as far as known

In 1903 300 chassis or complete vehicles were built. In 1908 there were already 500 copies, and from 1911 to 1914 about 600 per year. The Morris-Léon Bollée 12 CV produced about 1250 copies in the first three years, only 25 of the six-cylinder model and only six of the eight-cylinder model.

literature

Web links

Commons : Léon Bollée  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ George Nicholas Georgano (Ed.): The Beaulieu Encyclopedia of the Automobile . Volume 3: P-Z . Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, Chicago 2001, ISBN 1-57958-293-1 , pp. 1765 (English).
  2. ↑ Beverly Rae Kimes, Henry Austin Clark Jr .: Standard catalog of American Cars. 1805-1942. Digital edition . 3. Edition. Krause Publications, Iola 2013, ISBN 978-1-4402-3778-2 , pp. 1572 (English).
  3. ↑ Marguerite Duras: The Lover from Northern China. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1994, p. 32.