Letourneur et Marchand

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Letourneur et Marchand
legal form
founding 1905
resolution 1960
Seat Neuilly-sur-Seine , France
management Jean-Marie Letourneur
Jean-Arthur Marchand
Branch Body shop

Letourneur et Marchand (also written: Letourneur & Marchand ) was a French manufacturer of automobile bodies from the Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine , who manufactured exceptionally elegant individual bodies for luxury automobiles , especially in the period between the world wars. The company was Delage's preferred body supplier in the 1930s .

Company history

Delage D8S Aerodynamique with Letourneur-et-Marchand body (1937)
Delage D6-70 with Panoramique body by Letourneur et Marchand
Bugatti T57

Letourneur et Marchand was founded in 1905 by Jean-Marie Letourneur and Jean-Arthur Marchand. Both originally came from the French region of Burgundy and came to Paris independently of each other shortly before the beginning of the 20th century. Letourneur worked as a designer for the established carriage manufacturer Binder Carrossier in Neuilly-sur-Seine from 1900 , which Marchand also joined shortly after completing his training as a wheelwright . In April 1905, Letourneur and Marchand separated from Binder. Together they took over the premises of the previously insolvent bodywork company Wehrle Godard Desmaret and set up their own business there.

Initially, Letourneur et Marchand mainly worked as a subcontractor for other bodywork manufacturers, including Binder, Franay and Labourdette . In 1907 the company began to manufacture individual superstructures upon customer request; the design for the bodies came from Jean-Marie Letourneur. By the outbreak of the First World War , over 1200 bodies were built. During the war, the production of automobile bodies came to a standstill. Letourneur et Marchand was primarily a supplier to the armaments industry until 1918; Among other things, parts of aircraft superstructures were created here.

After the end of the war, Letourneur et Marchand resumed the production of exclusive individual bodies. As a second pillar , the subsidiary Autobineau was founded in 1924 , which produced more or less standardized car bodies using industrial methods. In this way, much larger quantities could be achieved than with the handcrafted production of the parent company, while on the other hand the individuality and exclusivity were limited. Contact to the exclusive Parisian sports car manufacturer Delage was established through Autobineau. In a few years 2000, Autobineau manufactured more or less identical superstructures for the Delage DI. In addition, there were still individual bodies that were created on customer request. Letourneur et Marchand had mainly worked for Delage since the 1930s, and the company also clad chassis for Buick , Duesenberg , Renault , Delahaye , Panhard , Rolls-Royce and Bugatti . Up to the outbreak of World War II , at least 19 bodies were made for the Bugatti Type 57 . From 1930 onwards, the design of the bodywork was largely in the hands of Marcel Letourneur, a son of the company's founder, who had been trained as an artist and had worked for several British bodywork companies in the 1920s. Marcel Letourneur often created aerodynamically designed superstructures that had a low belt line and dispensed with a central vehicle pillar to make the roof structure appear lighter. An outstanding example of this design style was Marcel Letourneurs Coupé Panoramique from 1937, which was created on a Delage D6 chassis. The company also produced similar bodies for chassis from other manufacturers, including Lincoln . The Letourneur and Marchand style was popular in the 1930s. The Cannes- based Carrossier Brandone imitated these lines in some of its bodies, which were intended for customers on the Côte d'Azur .

During the Second World War, automobile production came to a standstill again. Shortly before (Jean-Marie Letourneur, 1944) or after the end of the war (Jean-Arthur Marchand, 1946) the company's founders died. Their successors tried to resume operations, but, like their competitors Saoutchik and Figoni & Falaschi , failed because of the changing circumstances. This included, among other things, France's economic weakness in the early post-war years, due to which the demand for exclusive luxury vehicles was very limited. The former business partner Delage, who had been absorbed by the Delahaye company before the war, finally stopped production in 1953. In addition, the automobile manufacturers switched to self-supporting bodies , which set narrow limits for individual bodies. As a result, Letourneur et Marchand produced only 67 bodies in the eight years from the end of the war to 1952.

In 1953 the company tried to realign it. Letourneur et Marchand developed a convertible version of the Renault Frégate , a newly introduced vehicle in the upper middle class. The convertible was supposed to complement the coupé version manufactured by Chapron . The aim was to produce the convertible in a standardized manner and to have it sold and serviced nationwide through Renault dealers. However, this project was also unsuccessful. The “big Renault” suffered from numerous quality and reliability problems in the first few years, so that the demand for the production model fell well short of expectations. This reluctance on the part of customers also affected the convertible version, so that by 1960 Letourneur et Marchand produced only around 70 convertibles.

literature

Web links

Commons : Letourneur et Marchand  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Louis William Steinwedel, J. Herbert Newport: The Duesenberg: The Story of America's Premier Car. Chilton Book Co., 1970, ISBN 0-801-95559-9 . Pp. 94-95.
  2. ↑ Description and images of the Coupé Panoramique on the website www.classicdriver.com (accessed on October 12, 2014).
  3. ↑ History of the Renault Frégate with an image of the convertible on the website www.fregate-renault.org (accessed on October 12, 2014).