The French Line Part 4: Jacques Saoutchik----A Talent for Overstatement

Jacques Saoutchik got a head start on most of France's automotive coachbuilders, even though he spent the first 19 years of his life in Kiev, in what is now Ukraine.  He migrated to France to escape a pogrom just as the 19th century was closing, and started his firm in 1906 after apprenticing as a cabinet maker. His first assignment, an Isotta Fraschini completed in 1907, was firmly in the tall horseless carriage format, but by the time he got around to bodying a series of a dozen Mercedes Benz 680S roadsters in 1927, he had begun to develop his own ideas on automotive style. This involved emphasis on the wheels and the long engine hoods as separate elements, with chrome trim to outline the sweep of fenders.  By the time he got to the 1928 model below, he'd lowered the windshield, and carried the slanting line of the windshield frame down towards the fenders, using a contrasting color to lend a sense of forward motion... 

Also in 1928, Saoutchik received what must have seemed a dream commission; to clothe the chassis of the Bucciali TAV6 which had caused a sensation at that year's Paris Auto Salon.  A front-wheel drive chassis conceived by brothers Paul-Albert and Angelo Bucciali six years before Citroen's Traction Avant, the car was powered by a side-valve Continental six not unlike those in American taxi cabs, but stunned onlookers with its Sensaud de Lavaud automatic transmission and four-wheel independent suspension.  Saoutchik came up with a design that repeated themes on his earlier Mercedes, this time with the fenders  exposing huge cast alloy wheels, the fender tops level with the top of the car's hood.  Paul-Albert was more a conceptualizer and tinkerer than a businessman, however, and the brothers sold few cars while he was thinking of refinements, including an 8 cylinder version and also a TAV-16 with two parallel straight eights.  When it came time for what turned out to be his final masterpiece, he gave Saoutchik a call...

The TAV8-32 was exhibited at the 1932 Paris Salon, where it stunned the crowd.  As with TAV6, the fender tops were level with the hood line, but this time that hood enclosed a sleeve-valve V12 4.9 liter engine from Avions Voisin, another French automotive pioneer whose interest in aviation matched Paul-Albert's own. The chrome stork decoration on the engine bay was a reference to Bucciali's French Air Corps experience in WWI; he'd also been a stunt pilot at air shows.  The low-mounted Grebel headlights kept visual focus (as well as illumination) close to the road. The 4-speed transmission was still mounted transversely in front of the engine, and the lack of a drive shaft gave Jacques Saoutchik even more license to lower the car, which he cheerfully did. He named it "Fleche d"Or", or "Golden Arrow"...

The long wheelbase, short overhangs, and low windows enhance the rakish stance, as does the detail where the rear fender tops intersect the window sill lines. The huge double spare tires in their chromed casings will obstruct the view out of the rear window, but the lines are better for it...

Presented with the more conventional chassis and proportions of the 1935 Mercedes 500K shown below, Saoutchik fiddled with details rather than making grand gestures.  The odd spare tire fairings are a distraction, and their silver color accents, like those on the fenders, fragment the overall form, rather than underline it as on the earlier Mercedes 680S.

Saoutchik was on a better footing with his design for the Hispano-Suiza* J12 from 1934.  The confident forms and careful proportions conceal the great size; the picture would need a human figure to convey the car's true scale.  The Type 68 V12 engine ranged in size from 9.4 to 11.3 liters (this car has the larger one) and the wheelbase is 146 inches.

The Delage* D8-120S cabriolet, designed and built by Saoutchik in 1939, shows a similar confidence and mastery of simple forms.  Some design  themes and details repeat from earlier Saoutchik designs, including teardrop fenders and parallel-hinged doors...

Note that the Delage above features a handle oddly mounted in the center of the door.  This is to facilitate another of Saoutchik's favorite details, a wide outrigger door that opened parallel to the sides of the car, saving space and allowing easy access.  Based on a patent by Britain's James Young Coachworks, the door was also featured on the American Graham "shark nose" cabriolet Saoutchik bodied in 1938, shown below. 

Here Saoutchik's work was concentrated aft of the front fenders to transform a standard Graham sedan (designed by Amos Northrup) into a cabriolet.  The dip in the window sill reduces the visual height of the car, and the dorsal fin on the deck lid, appropriate to a car called "shark nose", appeared in other Saoutchik designs of the late 1930s and 40s. 

This particular car served with the Free French forces in North Africa under Charles de Gaulle after its civilian life was interrupted.  The door closeup below shows a detail of the parallel hinge mechanism.  It added weight and complexity, and the resulting expense kept it from catching on with other car builders.

The door system was also a signature feature on Andre Dubonnet's Hispano-Suiza Xenia*, designed by Jean Andreau with details and construction by Saoutchik in 1938, a busy year for the designer. If overstatement was one of his themes, here we see an exuberant embrace of aerodynamics and technology…the panoramic windshield and side windows wrapped into the roof, and the smoothly integrated teardrop fenders covered a new chassis design with Dubonnet's patented independent front suspension, which he licensed to GM and Alfa Romeo.  The sheer optimism of the Xenia is almost touching today; Dubonnet used it to pubicize his automotive inventions and drove it as his personal car in the less than two years that elapsed before the Nazi invasion of France...

The Bugatti* Type 57 shown below was built the year after the Xenia.  Note the way chrome accents are employed to integrate details like the deck hinges and tail lights into the overall form, and to underline the teardrop shapes of the fenders.  Barely visible is another deft detail: there's a clock in the hub of the steering wheel.

War closed the car business and changed it for the peace that followed. French economy  cars from Citroen and Renault put the country on wheels.  Luxury cars were taxed heavily, and sales steadily fell.  French cars were designated by taxable horsepower, which was in turn related to engine size. The Saoutchik-bodied '49 Talbot Lago Grand Sport below, at 26cv, had 13 times the taxable horsepower of the smallest Citroen. Talbot's 4.5 liter inline hemi-head six with twin lateral cams developed 190 hp (210 in later versions). This came at a price; American hostellier Louis Ritter paid $17,500 for the blue and white cabriolet.

Saoutchik's design for the Delahaye* 175S below is even more full of theatrical flourishes. Note the full wheel enclosures which make the car seem to float above the road on hidden, and probably overloaded, tires.  Heavier than the Talbot and also a 4.5 liter car, it marked another high point in overchromed exuberance... 

But not quite the summit of overchromed exuberance. Saoutchik bodied two Cadillac Series 62s in the chubby, almost comically voluptuous form shown below in 1948 to '49. A near twin to the car below, though without the faux cane pattern on the door, and in a more restrained dark blue and violet color scheme, was driven from coast to coast across the USA by its new owner and his wife, along with the Talbot Lago convertible shown above. They reported that the Cadillac handled better in icy conditions.

During the same period, Saoutchik bodied around half a dozen Talbot Lago Grand Sport coupes with slimmer proportions in a style that was more sporting and less decorated, but still exuberant in use of color.

The tapered deck recalls Buicks of the period; here the Saoutchik GS is parked next to prewar Talbot Lagos by Pourtout (center) and Figoni (far left).  The simpler, but somehow chubbier, Grand Sport coupe shown below has a similar tail, and also a Saoutchik-specific door pillar set forward of the trailing edge of the window, apparently to make the proportions of the windows more pleasing with the door closed.  

Grilles varied from the vertical one shown above to modified ovals as on the red and black coupe below, a Grand Sport from 1951.  Note how the color swage emphasizes the fender form...

Talbot and Delahaye were struggling, along with the other French luxury makes, by the time Saoutchik designed one of the first Delahaye 235s.  As Delahaye had done with the chassis and engine, the body restates themes developed in the late 1930s, including the sweeping fender forms and the subtle fin centered on the deck lid.

Ironically, when Jacques Saoutchik got a free hand to explore new design themes, it was on an actual old chassis, not just an old-fashioned one. The 1932 Type 50 Bugatti shown below was re-bodied for its owner as a kind of honeymoon present to his bride.  Everything from the roof form, which echoes contemporary Italian designs, to the blade-like fenders, looks ahead to future European designs, and even Elwood Engel's 1961 Continental.  The large alloy wheels would be comfortable on a 1990s concept car, but they are actually the original Bugatti wheels from 1932. This car was re-bodied 20 years later in 1952; as with the 1934 Hispano, deft control of proportions conceals vast size.

Also in 1952, Saoutchik built the sleek fastback below, a "Coach Panoramique" on another Delahaye 235 chassis.  Here 1950s themes, including the glassy fastback and turned-up rear fenders echoing the Bugatti above, meld with swooping fenders from the most advanced designs of the late 1930s.

The flattened oval grille lends the design a modern, horizontal feel.  The Coach Panoramique is shown below at the 1952 Paris Salon, parked between Saoutchik's personal Delahaye and, on the turntable, one of the first Pegaso* Z102s for which the French designer received a contract to build several dozen.  The Thirties-style swooping fenders didn't translate well to the short-wheelbase Pegaso chassis, as can be seen by comparing it to the Delahaye coupe...

Saoutchik worked with his son Pierre to produce a better design for their Series II Pegaso coupes. These had a higher fender line dipping just aft of the doors, a lower roof profile, and front and rear fenders extended past the hood and deck surfaces to reduce visual height and create a sense of motion. By now Saoutchik was competing with Italian coachbulding house Superleggera Touring, which had also begun to produce designs for Pegaso, and the father and son team needed the work, as Delahaye and Delage built their last passenger cars in 1954, and Talbot Lago was moving toward less-costly cars in a futile attempt to survive.

The red and black Z-102B shows off those very Fifties hooded head and tail lights, as well as the 4 cam alloy V8 that made Pegasos so expensive.  Chassis price alone was around $9,000, and cars bodied in Milan or Paris started around $15,000.  This resulted in low sales; only around 7 dozen Pegasos of all styles were built; at least 18 of those were bodied by Saoutchik. 

The last one bodied by Saoutchik, and the last car of any description styled by the firm, was shown on their stand at the 1954 Paris show.  Note that the fender extensions and hooded headlights have been dropped for gently contoured fenders and simple lighting echoing the era's Italian designs. The two-tone color scheme is the only sign of French exuberance. Jacques Saoutchik died in 1955, and his son Pierre closed the great coachbuilding house later that year.

*Footnote:  Some makes of car pictured in this piece are featured in the archives of  this blog.  Additional notes and pictures, often of work by other coachbuilders, are contained in the following:
"Authenticity vs. Originality: A Tale of Four Bugattis", June 11, 2017
"Delage: A Car for the Ages", May 20, 2018
"Golden Days of Delahayes", June 30, 2018
"Hispano Suiza: Swiss Precision, Spanish Drama, French Style", Sept. 25, 2017
Hispano Suiza Xenia---"One of One: A Brief History of Singular Cars," Sept. 7, 2015
"Forgotten Classic: Pegaso, Spain's Flying Horse", June 21, 2019

Photo Credits:
1st: revivaler.com 
2rd: flickr.com
3rd & 4th: auta5p.eu
5th & 7th: enwheelsage.org
6th: drivetribe.com
8th thru 10th:  rmsothebys.com, featured at hemmings.com
11th:  George Havelka
12th:  flickr.com
13th:  rmshothebys.com
14th:  enwheelsage.com
15th:  wikimedia
16th & 17th:  George Havelka
18th & 19th:  the author
20th: barrett-jackson.com
21th: wikimedia.com 
22nd: pinterest.com 
23rd: carsthatnevermadeitetc.com  ('52 Bugatti T50 rebody)
24th & 25th:  the author
26th: classiccarcatalogue.com
27th thru 29th:  George Havelka
30th: coachbuild.com forum