Solex
Solex was a French manufacturer of carburetors and the Vélosolex moped . The company was founded in 1905 by Maurice Goudard and Marcel Mennesson, two students at the École Centrale Paris . Initially the company of the company was Société Goudard et Mennesson , the name was then replaced by the more memorable made-up word Solex . The first product was a centrifugal water cooler for automobiles, especially for buses.
Carburetor
Around the time of the First World War , the company acquired a patent for the manufacture of carburetors. This product soon supplanted cooler production. Until the 1980s, Solex carburetors were used by almost all continental European car manufacturers. Electronic manifold injection became indispensable for regulated catalytic converters in cars . There were several licensees around the world: In Germany, Solex carburetors were manufactured by the Deutsche-Vergaser-Gesellschaft (Pierburg GmbH) with headquarters in Neuss and a plant in West Berlin . Pierburg merged in 1997 to form Kolbenschmidt Pierburg AG . In Japan, the Mikuni company was a licensee, which sold the carburetors to Japanese car and motorcycle manufacturers. In 1973 the carburetor business was taken over by the French company Matra and subsequently sold to the Italian company Magneti Marelli . The former carburetor plant has been operating as Magneti Marelli France since 1994 .
Vélosolex
see main article Vélosolex
As early as 1917, the founder Marcel Mennesson received a patent for a bicycle with an auxiliary motor on the rear axle. The first prototype of the Vélosolex with the typical friction roller drive on the front wheel appeared in 1940/41. From 1946 to 1988 the Vélosolex was built over six million times in various versions and achieved cult status in many countries. The peak year was 1964 with an annual production of 380,000 pieces. In 1974 the Vélosolex division was sold to Renault and Motobécane . Motobécane, which later took over the majority, was taken over by Yamaha after its bankruptcy and renamed MBK Industrie in 1984 . However, demand fell steadily. On November 7, 1988, the production of the Velosolex was finally stopped at the Saint-Quentin plant.
Licensed buildings were built in Hungary until 2002 and are still manufactured in China today. The US company Velosolex America LLC owns the rights to the brand name "Vélosolex" today .
