The French Line Part 5: Figoni & Falaschi----Curving Forms for Winding Roads

Joseph Figoni would wave his hand in the air, tracing a curve, and say, "We like the streamline."  An Italian whose family moves to Paris when he is 14, he fights in World War I and survives to find himself running a coachbuilding firm in his adopted city.  By 1925 he is building special bodies for a variety of makes, including Alfa Romeo and Delage, under his own name. The 1933 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 coupe shown below highlights some Figoni themes.  A curved roof flows seamlessly into the deck with its round lid covering the spare. Subtle indented lines follow the arc of the roof, framing the rear window before they converge at the base of the deck.  Contrasting color arcs across the hood and draws attention to the rear wheels.  Just looking at the car makes you want to point it down a winding road...

The next year Figoni designs and builds the body for the only Voisin C27 roadster.  Here the black swage line separates the cockpit and hood from the flanks, creating a sense of movement... 

At the rear, the circular deck lid repeats from the Alfa coupe, and a subtle ridge is formed into it.  This will become a fin on later Figoni designs.  In 1935, Figoni forms a partnership with Ovidio Falaschi, who runs the business end while Joseph handles design.  The Delahaye* 135 cabriolet below shows the flowing fender forms which begin to appear around this time, enclosed at the front, rather than open as on the Alfa and Voisin.

                             

The year after the partnership is formed, Figoni produces the first of three coupes on the short-wheelbase Delahaye 135 Competition chassis.  He is still following the streamline, fully enclosing front as well as rear wheels. Note the concave teardrop front fender forms that allow space for steering angles, and also the way the dark blue roof and medium blue fenders are separated by a bright molding of light blue, emphasizing the fender lines.  Figoni is on his way to a masterwork...

On the 4 liter Talbot Lago* T150 chassis, he produces a couple notchback coupes resembling Touring-bodied Alfa Romeos, and also the fastback design below, still with straight side window sills, but with separate teardrop fenders and a fin formed into the rear deck. 

In the same year, 1937, Figoni takes another step toward integrating all the elements into an ideal streamlined form.  This is the definitive Teardrop (Goutte d'Eau) on the Talbot Lago chassis.  The car shown is on the most powerful T150SS short-wheelbase chassis. There were also a couple of cars on the less powerful T23.  Note the way the fenders seamlessly join the metal shroud around the central air intake, and the headlights hidden behind grilles which echo the air intake.  The bumper is reduced to a single aerodynamic blade...

The leading edge of the fenders is more like an ellipse than a circle, and the teardrop shapes of the front fenders taper until they meet the teardrop rear fender forms.  There are no running boards...

The side windows are elliptical.  Door handles are flush, as are the "trafficator" flags inset behind the doors, and chrome sills at the lower fenders underline the curves.  The rear window is a simple kidney shape, and the shape of the rear deck, with chrome topping the fin formed into it, repeats the ovoid theme.  The rear bumper, like the front, is a single airfoil shape, here with a slight "V" along the car's center line...

The exhaust is centered on the car as well.  It seems that no detail has been ignored...

Vents along the side of the hood are outlined by chrome arrows which lead the eye forward.

While the fenders, roof, deck and nose are all hand-formed compound curves, the hood tricks the eye.  It's really a simple, singly-curved surface...

The engine on all these cars is an overhead-valve inline six of just under 4 liters. Transmission was a four-speed pre-selector. A fastback Teardrop coupe like the one above took 2nd place in the 1938 running of the Le Mans 24 Hours.  Around two dozen Talbot Lagos would leave F & F shops with these design themes, including fastback Teardrops, semi-fastbacks and cabriolets.  Then war would halt all progress.

Early examples of what came to be called the Teardrop coupe were built in a semi-fastback design like the one shown above and below.  Named "Jeancart" after the first client, the semi-fastback had a divided rear window, as well as kidney-shaped side windows to differentiate it from the true Teardrops.  Most of the coupes were built with removable metal sunroofs, like this car.  All five Jeancart coupes differed in trim details.  

The close-coupled, 4 passenger (well, 2+2) T23 coupe shown above and below ran with a detuned version of the same 4 liter six that powered the T150SS. This 1938 specimen features a glassier profile than the Teardrop coupes, but shares the subtle chrome accents on the deck fin and fenders.  

Details like trim and lighting differed from car to car. This coupe has tail lights that are especially well-integrated with the fender forms and trim... 

The Figoni & Falaschi badge, however, never lost the stepped, upside-down ziggurat form that came from the Art Deco Twenties...

Along with the coupes, Figoni built  competition roadsters and a handful of cabriolets.  The car below is one of those, on the 1937 Delahaye 135 MS short chassis, with aluminum bodywork, patented retractable windshield and tubular seat frames, and a patented design for enclosed front wheels.  Front fenders flow into the rear as on the Teardrop coupes.  At least one of the Talbot Teardrops is also built with fully enclosed front wheels.

A handful of Delahayes and Talbots were also built with separate teardrop fenders and simplified wheel spats, front and rear.  These reflected ideas by illustrator Geo Ham, who produced posters for road races during this period, often with idealized streamliners hurtling through curves.  The example below is a 1938 Talbot Lago T150C SS.

The much larger Delahaye Type 165 was intended as a luxury cruiser for well-heeled car enthusiasts.  One feature its body design shared with the smaller Figoni-designed Lago and Delahaye 135 cabriolets was the provision of fully-skirted wheels front and rear...

At the front fenders, subtle indentations were hand-formed above the convex teardrops that allow steering clearance for the wheels.

Figoni & Falaschi completed the first of two 165 cabriolets in time for the 1938 Paris Auto Show.  A second car was sent to New York for the 1939 World's Fair, but without crankshaft, connecting rods or pistons.  The second car was completed after World War II.  Both shared a patented windshield that cranked down into the cowl. The deck-mounted dorsal fin derives from previous Figoni designs; the car seems to float on shadows, with barely visible wheels...

Though this essay is mostly about visual form, it would be bad informational form not to point out that the aluminum-block, three-cam V12 engine that powered the Type 165 was derived from the magnesium-block, three-cam V12 that powered the Type 145 Grand Prix single-seater to an upset victory over the German Mercedes team at the 1938 Pau Grand Prix.*  Both engines were 4.5 liters, but the racer got 2 spark plugs per cylinder...

Chrome trim in a wave form decorates the front fender skirts;  the 165 shared its traditional Delahaye grille with lesser models.

One Type 165 cabriolet was stranded, along with a Delage and other exhibits, at the French Pavilion of the New York World's Fair in 1940 when Nazi troops invaded France.  After the Second World War, French government plans to reorganize the automobile industry, along with higher taxes on luxury cars and a waning aristocracy, contracted the market for custom, coachbuilt cars.

Figoni showed the above coupe with removable roof panel on the Delahaye 175 chassis at the Paris Salon in 1947. The 4.5 liter car was a new model for Delahaye, and the flowing, full-width fully-enveloping bodywork was Figoni's first attempt to produce a new form for the postwar car. The widest point of the cabin is across the seating area, with nearly flush sides at that point, but this is concealed by the downward flow of the front fender forms across the doors, avoiding the slab-sided look of early envelope bodies. F & F built at least one cabriolet to a similar design during this period...

...and one of the rare postwar coupes was converted to a convertible decades later. 

The unique body on the new 4.5 liter Talbot Lago Grand Sport, from 1949, is an even braver attempt to predict the future.  The sides are flush, with visual interest created by the window shapes, proportions and contours.  A busy grille and over-decorated nose misses the purity of the pre-war Teardrops, but the car is startling when compared to most postwar designs...

The design is more successful at the rear, where the elliptical fins of the rear fenders extend into the roof.  Elliptical side windows echo the prewar Teardrop coupes, as do the wave form trims at the body sills.  This is perhaps the first postwar design where the body sides are completely flush, predicting themes that would be explored in a couple of decades by designers like Giorgetto Giugiaro.  Only one of these Talbot Lago coupes would be built in this style by Figoni.  More conventional Figoni bodies were were built on Delahaye, Citroen, and even Simca chassis in this period, but Figoni could not compete with the more cost-effective series production of competitors like Facel Metallon. Faced with declining orders and a disappearing French luxury car industry, Figoni suspended operations in 1955.

*Footnote:

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 Delahaye and Delage were reviewed in "The French Line Part 3" (2-12-20). Delahayes were featured in "Golden Days of Delahayes" from 6-30-18, and also in "Dreyfus and the Million-Franc Delahaye vs. the Third Reich" from 11-22-15.  

Photo Credits: 

Top thru 4th from top:  the author                     

5th thru 8th:  George Havelka 

6th thru 12th:   the author

13th thru 15th:  Linda La Fond

16th & 17th:  George Havelka

18th:  Ian Avery-DeWitt

19th:  wikimedia (photo by Zinc)

20th thru 22nd:  the author

23rd thru 25th:  George Havelka 

26th:  classiccarcatalogue.com

27th:  Carven, reproduced on coachbuildforum.com

28th:  enwheelsage.com

29th & bottom:  flickr.com