We begin our story with a few Talbot logos from Talbot Lagos. Their story goes back to the dawn of the automobile, and involves founder Alexandre Darracq, Clément Talbot, an early attempt at a transnational combine involving the British Sunbeam firm, and cars variously named Darracqs, Talbots and Talbot-Lagos. Like a lot of stories about how to make (and especially, lose) a fortune in the car business, it's a complicated one. Alexandre Darracq began with bicycles in 1896 and built a car in 1900; the early cars were successful enough that Darracq was able to sell shares to an English consortium, maintaining control himself until the failure of a rotary-valve engine design in 1911*. The English company, which also built vehicles under the Clément Talbot name, dropped the Darracq name from its cars in 1922. A merger with Sunbeam led to Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq, and the French cars were called Darracq in England to avoid confusion with the English Talbots. This all came to a crashing halt in 1934, with the Depression-hastened collapse of S-T-D. An Italian-born engineer employed by S-T-D, Antonio Lago, managed to buy the French part of the operation, including its factory in Suresnes, near Paris, in 1935...
One reason S-T-D expired was its failure to share components; there was needless duplication and waste. But Lago liked the French division's six-cylinder engine, and went to work on it, combining it with the Wilson pre-selector transmission, which allowed remarkably quick shifts, and began to think of going racing. Within a year the Talbot engine, which American driver Phil Hill later likened to "a Plymouth with Ardun heads" began to score some victories in road racing, and the chassis attracted the attention of designer Joseph Figoni. The bodies crafted by Figoni et Falaschi soon began to establish the Talbot Lago as a modern performance car, the appropriate equipment for a session on a road course or on the lawn at a concours d'elegance...
By 1937 Figoni had launched a series of spectacular teardrop coupés with kidney-shaped windows and sine-wave fenders with ellipsoid leading edges; straight lines seemed to have been banished for good. So was any concern for budgets, with prices starting around $10,000. The couple dozen coupés and cabriolets built in this style would have an influence far beyond their numbers, especially on cars to be built after the war that was fast approaching. Before war came, Talbot Lago took 2nd at Le Mans in 1938.
The Nazi invasion of France in 1940 interrupted this expensive extravaganza, but Antonio Lago came back after the war with an engine he'd had his engineers scheme during the Occupation. The prewar six was expanded from 4 liters to 4.5, with hemispherical combustion chambers and valves operated by twin, laterally placed camshafts. The engine received aluminum heads and lightweight pistons in Lago's single seat GP cars, and in the Grand Sport versions offered for the road. Jacques Saoutchik* bodied several Grand Sports with lush, sweeping curves emphasized by contrasting colors and artful application of trim. He offered other styles as well, including notchback coupes, a coupe de ville, and a cabriolet. The coupe below is from 1948. Prices were astronomical, with one cabriolet selling in the US for $17,000.
Henri Chapron*, whose work appeared more frequently on Delahaye and Delage chassis, bodied the Grand Sport coupe shown below in the same year. The car shares its roofline, fender shapes and proportions with two Delahaye 145 racers Chapron rebodied as coupes during this period. These Talbots still used the Wilson pre-selector gearbox offered in the prewar cars.
Coachbuilder Hermann Graber*, also the Talbot Lago dealer for Switzerland, bodied several of the cars between 1947 and 1953. Swiss laws waived import taxes on chassis to be bodied by Swiss coachbuilders, and this kept specialists like Graber and Worblaufen going well into the postwar era. Graber also applied the rounded envelope style of the cabriolet below to contemporary Bentley chassis.
The Graber coupe design, with its fenders flowing into the flanks, resembles Touring Superleggera bodies on the Alfa Romeo 6C2500 chassis from the 1940s. Graber was still offering this style in 1950 and '51.
In 1951, Dutch coachbuilder Pennock got into the act with a one-off car for an affluent amateur. One of the rare short chassis Grand Sports built (the GS total is estimated between 30 and 39), it reflects a focus on function as a rally car, rather than as a show car on the concours circuit. Compared with efforts by Figoni and Saoutchik, there is less emphasis on any formal theme, and some elements, like the concave rectangular grille, seem at odds with the prevailing convex curves...
At the rear, abrupt tail fins frame the gently rounded backlight with its neatly hinged, opening center section, and an ovoid deck lid. Note that on the deck the car is identified as a Lago Grand Sport; there's no mention of Talbot...
In the same year, Stabilimenti Farina (founded by Giovanni, Battista "Pinin" Farina's older brother) showed a more modern interpretation of the Grand Sport chassis with this cabriolet. It was also a one-off, but except for G. Farina's attempt to create a modern Talbot identity with that horizontal grille, it very much resembled his Ferrari 166 convertible from 1950.
In 1952, Rocco Motto's* carrozzeria produced another Italian version of the Grand Sport. Like the Pennock coupe, the focus is on function, but because the function here is road racing, the forms and details are pared down to an expressive, lightweight alloy shell. The overall effect is more harmonious than the Pennock coupe, and the car echoes Motto's work on smaller chassis like Siata and Salmson, as well as his Ferrari 212 Export.
Hermann Graber updated his designs for Talbot a couple of times before arriving at this handsome solution in 1953. The wide, low proportions and gently rounded contours are accented by restrained trim, as at the forward-leaning chrome that delineates the leading edge of the rear fender. The hood completes its forward arc well below the arc of the fenders, emphasizing the low stance. This car would influence Graber's later designs for Alvis*, which would provide work for his specialist firm until the late 1960s.
When Lago decided to offer "factory" coachwork on the Grand Sport, he commissioned a design from Carlo Delaisse. The resulting Grand Sport Longue (GSL) appeared in 1953, and like the Graber design above, employed a flattened version of the traditional Talbot grille to reflect the horizontal modernity of the design. While the chassis design was beginning to show its age, the 4.5 liter engine was uprated to 210 hp. Note that these cars, like most French luxury cars, had right-hand drive.
Undecorated flanks support the gentle arc of the roof; glazing is more generous than on earlier Grand Sports by Chapron, Graber or Saoutchik. The reverse slant "C" pillar points to the meeting of the front fender's arc with that of the rear one.
Some of the GSLs had air extractor vents behind the front wheels, and there were detail differences between these cars owing to their hand-built construction. The GSL was a large car with a 104.3 inch wheelbase. By the time it appeared, it was no longer the most powerful production car. Jaguar was offering the same power from the high performance version of its XK120 at less than half the price; Ferrari was offering more power, allied with lower weight, in the Talbot's price range. So the GSL wound up being not quite a production car, with between 19 and 21 examples built between 1953 and '55. It was pretty, though...
So when Tony Lago decided to introduce a smaller car at a more affordable price, he was able to scale down the GSL design on a wheelbase half a foot shorter, with a tighter roof profile and a lower hood. A new version of the Talbot four was designed with five main bearings and sized just under 2.5 liters. The heavy Wilson pre-selector gearbox gave way to an all-synchromesh Pont-a-Mousson 4 speed. Produced in various levels of trim and reflecting Lago's tentative approach to naming things, the car was called the 2500 Sport, the Rapide, and the T14 LS. With tubular steel chassis and aluminum body, weight was quoted around 700 pounds less than the GSL. After the first show cars, body construction switched to steel. But the new engine proved rough and unreliable, and only 54 cars were sold from 1955-'57.
Desperate for sales and unable to afford design and tooling costs for yet another new engine, Lago explored obtaining engines from Maserati and then BMW, and settled on a version of the BMW V8* reduced to just below 2.5 liters to avoid steep French sales tax above that limit. He finally had the idea of seriously marketing his cars in the United States, and called the revised 2500 Sport the America upon its 1957 introduction. As a result the Lago America was the first Talbot Lago to feature left-hand drive, abandoning the conceit among French luxury car makers that right-hand drive embodied more class. Most cars shipped to the US had roll-down side windows rather than the sliding ones shown below. The use of the special 2.5 liter version of the V8 may have suited the French market, but the 3.2 liter version would have better suited the American one, especially at the $7,400 price quoted by Otto Zipper's LA dealership...
There were also a couple of "high-roof" versions, and the glassier greenhouse not only provides more room in the cabin, it makes the car look even more modern, especially with the revised door window frames, which finally fit the arc of the roof. Time was running out though, and by 1959 Tony Lago's final fling with the idea of a production car would sell only a dozen units. Other than a handful of cars built with Simca V8s (née flathead French Ford) to use up parts after the Simca takeover that year, the Lago America was the last Talbot Lago offered to customers.
But that's not quite the end of the story. Tony Lago commissioned two road-racing barquettes powered by Maserati 250F engines to contest the 1956 Le Mans, which limited prototypes to 2.5 liters in order to slow down the field after the catastrophic crash that marked the 1955 race. The cars were conventional in chassis design, with the frame dominated by 2 large diameter steel tubes, independent coil front suspension, and a rigid rear axle on leaf springs. The car shown, piloted by veteran Louis Rosier (left) and Jean Behra (right), went 220 laps before transmission trouble ended their run; the winning Jagaur D-type went 300 laps. The other Talbot crashed. The alloy bodywork, by Pichon Parat, is marked by a mix of Italian style and French pragmatism, with tight overhangs and a short tail...
One of these two Lago Maseratis was re-bodied by Modenese coachbuilder Campana to a design by Franco Reggiani echoing his Stanguellini* racers for the 1957 Le Mans, and sponsored by Andre Dubonnet. While the car stalled on the starting line owing to clutch trouble, it survives to this day as an example of the kind of car that might have saved Lago's car company if offered with the right engine at the right price. The Jaguar XK-SS lurking in the background is a reminder that 4 years later, Jaguar did that with its E-Type. Ultimately Talbot Lago's demise resulted from relying on artisan techniques to compete with the assembly line adopted by Jaguar, Mercedes and Alfa Romeo, as well as an insularity that prompted Lago to ignore the American market until it was too late. Simca bought Talbot Lago in 1959, and Antonio Lago died at the end of 1960. The Peugeot Citroen combine, PSA, bought Simca from Chrysler in 1978 and rebadged some Simca sedans as Talbots, but this effort ended in 1984. Tony Lago probably would not have recognized any of those boxy sedans as Talbots.
Alfa Romeo has its roots in a company founded in 1910 to produce Darracq vehicles under license in Italy; Nicolo Romeo would take ownership in 1915. Talbot Lagos with special bodies were presented in our posts "The French Line Part 1" (bodies by Marcel Pourtout, 1-17-20) and "The French Line Part 4" (bodies by Jacques Saoutchik, 3-8-20). Designs by Henri Chapron for Lago rivals Delahaye and Delage were reviewed in "The French Line Part 3" (2-12-20). We'll focus on Figoni & Falaschi in an upcoming post. Carrozzeria Motto's work is surveyed in "Unsung Genius: Rocco Motto, the Closer" (3-25-18). The Talbot Lago America, along with other cars named America, previously appeared in our post entitled "The Other America: Talbot Lago 2500" on 7-3-16. Talbot's main domestic rival, Delahaye, was profiled in "Golden Days of Delahayes" from 6-30-18. Finally , you can compare the last Talbot Maserati racing car with a similar design for Stanguellini in "The Etceterini Files Part 5" in these posts from March 21, 2016.
Photo Credits:
Top left: pinterest.com Top right: wikimedia
2nd: George Havelka
3nd thru 5th: the author
6th: madle.org
7th: Linda La Fond
8th: en.wheelsage.org
9th: motorbase.com
10th & 11th: Lt. Jonathan Asbury, USN
12th: wikimedia
13th: en.wheelsage.org
14th: alvisarchives.com
15th thru 17th: Linda La Fond
17th thru 19th: wikimedia
20th: classiccarcatalogue.com
Bottom: Linda La Fond
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