American Frank Jay Gould, owner of hotels and casinos on the French Riviera, decided to found a coachbuilding firm in 1925. It was an optimistic time; the War to End All Wars was seven years in the past, and wealthy Americans had come to Paris to enjoy the resurgence of art, literature and the good life. Gould's idea was to cater to this clientele. He named the firm De Villars after his son-in-law. The firm's designers and craftsmen bodied the Bugatti Type 46 below in 1930...
This roadster on the straight eight cylinder, 5.3 liter chassis restated 1920s ideas of elegance, with deft touches like the flowing front fender shapes and the running board expressed as an oval. You could imagine it humming along tree-lined roads to the Cote d'Azur in one of Scott Fitzgerald's fictions, or in Calvin Tompkins' Living Well is the Best Revenge, a biography of American artist Gerald Murphy...
The Great Depression had arrived by the time De Villars built this swooping creation on a Delage* D8S chassis in 1933, but somebody was happy to write a very large check for one of the last cars Delage designed and built before Delahaye took over the financially troubled firm in early 1935. Note that the more flowing forms than on the earlier Bugatti, with the front fenders meeting the rear ones, the chrome window sill trim echoing the fender's curve, and the forms of the fender more fully enclosing the front wheel.
De Villars produced this epic tourer on the Hispano-Suiza* J12 chassis in 1935. The fenders more fully envelop the front wheels than on the Delage, and the designers at De Villars use the covered, side-mounted spare tires and giant headlights as separate design elements. It's a conservative design, not quite embracing the trend towards streamlining...
Three years later, De Villars showed that they were aware of the teardrop shapes coming out of outfits like Figoni & Falaschi, Graber and Pourtout with this Delahaye* Type 135MS roadster. The contrasting color swage connecting the window sill with the hood is reminiscent of Delahayes bodied by Chapron during this period.
When this car was restored after I first saw it during the early 1990s, the restorers decided to eliminate the contrasting color along the car's flanks. The forms are strong enough to be convincing without the two-toning, but the design loses a bit of its verve. The interior stayed red.
The photo above shows De Villars' most famous creation, their Delage D8-120 Super Sport roadster, suffering the indignity of being used as mere transportation, and looking very much like a used car. This car and the Delahaye from 1938 are mechanically related. After Delahaye took over Delage, they offered Delages with new engines based on Delahaye designs, a 3 liter six at a lower price than the 3.5 liter Delahaye 135, and also a new D8 which was unique to Delage, and based on adding two cylinders to the 135 engine design. Louis Delage stayed on the board of the new company, and insisted on hydraulic brakes for his cars, so this spectacular roadster has better stopping power than the Delahaye as well as more torque. For once De Villars came up with a design theme all their own, with flat riveted plates creating a teardrop shape around the helmet forms of the semicircular fenders, front and rear. At the front, these plates protected passers-by from contacting the hot exposed exhaust pipes...
…while at the rear, they formed a futuristic composition with the single fin centered on the deck lid. It appears that De Villars built only one of these D8-120 roadsters, and that they built their reputation on an unusually small number of mostly one-off custom automobiles. The arrival of yet another war in Europe ended their run, but with this extravagantly streamlined Delage, the Americans in Paris cemented their place in history.
*Footnote: The marque Delage is featured in our post, "Delage: A Car for the Ages" from May 20, 2018. Hispano-Suizas were featured on Sept. 25, 2017 in Hispano-Suiza: Swiss Precision, Spanish Drama, French Style", "Rolling Sculpture" from Dec. 31, 2016 and "A Brief History of Singular Cars" from Sept. 7, 2015. Delahaye automobiles are featured in our Archives in the following posts: "Golden Days of Delahayes" posted on June 30, 2018, "Chasing the Streamline" from May 30, 2017, "Rolling Sculpture" and also in "Dreyfus and the Million-Franc Delahaye" from Nov. 22, 2015.
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8th: La Vie de l'Auto, reproduced on crankhandleblog.com
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