Forgotten Classic: Salmson 2300s

In the 1950s, the French specialist car makers hit a wall.  High taxes on luxury vehicles slowed sales to a trickle.  Delahaye and Delage merged with Hotchkiss, and then discontinued production of all but trucks and jeep-style military vehicles after 1954.  Bugatti built fewer than a dozen Type 101s before giving up on passenger cars, and the mid-engined (but unwieldy) Type 251 GP car from 1955 was the last high-profile effort from the Bugatti family.  Gordini was bought by Renault in 1957, the same year Talbot-Lago gave up on making its own engines and adopted the BMW V8 to use up about a dozen chassis, and also the same year that Salmson discontinued car manufacture, which by then was concentrated on the four cylinder 2300s.  While Salmson was largely unknown outside France, their modern twin overhead cam engine, under the tax threshold at 2.3 liters, would have seemed to offer a decent chance for popularity, at least inside France. This somewhat Alfa-like engine had some performance potential, featuring an aluminum head with hemispherical combustion chambers.  But the company was slow to adapt to changing tastes; they stayed with right-hand drive, for example, like some other upper-crust makes, and continued offering the heavy Cotal electromagnetic preselector transmission even though it wasn't well-suited to smaller and lighter postwar cars.  In the postwar era, they managed to produce around 230 of the 2300s model (1953-57) and a couple thousand of the more sedate S4 which preceded it.  Of the sportier 2300s, there are a few with special bodywork, like Henri Chapron's cabriolets based on his "standard" 4-passenger coupe…

...and some rally cars and club racers with bodywork reflecting Italian influence.  These included a Talbot-like, supercharged one-off by Pichon & Parat, which ran in the Monte Carlo Rally…

Few were ever exported; even the spider and coupe bodied by Motto in Italy went home to France, where they raced at Le Mans. 

Salmson offered the competition-focused Grand Sport on a shorter wheelbase, but sales of these stayed in the single digits because of the high price, which would have bought a Jaguar XK120 in Paris.  GS bodywork included a glassy bubble top with a low belt line and a more Farina-inspired fastback, both by Pichon & Parat…

In 1955, Phillipe Charbonneaux styled a fiberglass-bodied barquette for the Paris dealership.  It remained a one-off like the Motto Le Mans spider, but has survived along with that car…

These cars were rendered extinct by mass-produced performance machinery, first from Jaguar and then Alfa-Romeo.  Today, however, they might seem a bargain compared with the last Delahayes and Talbots from the same era.  Just finding one of the Salmson Grand Sports or the long-lost supercharged coupe would be a reward for any car detective…

Footnote:  Historian Fabien Sabates gives a total production figure of 234 units for the 2300s.  Of this total, 217 were the 4-passenger coupe first bodied by Esclasson and then in larger numbers by Chapron.  The remaining 17 cars include 5 Chapron cabriolets, 3 Motto-bodied cars, and the rally cars and Grand Sports bodied by Pichon & Parat.

Photo Credits from top:
1954-57 Chapron Cabriolet:  Henri Chapron, reprinted in patrimoineautomobile.com 
2nd & 3rd:  1955 supercharged coupe for René Cotton, from Amicale-Salmson.org
Red 1955 Motto Le Mans spider:  Amicale-Salmson.org
5th & 6th:  Motto Le Mans spider in road trim, from liberallifestyles.com
7th:  Motto Le Mans coupe, from www.les24heures.fr
8th (on left):  Grand Sport bubble top, from rarefrenchsportscars.files.wordpress.com
9th (on right):  GS fastback, from blogdoctissimo.com
10th: GS fastback:  Pichon et Parat, from coachbuild.com forum
Bottom:  2300s Barquette Nadaud, from largus.fr