Delage: A Car for the Ages

Louis Delage left Peugeot and went into the horseless carriage business in 1905; the first automobile appeared under the Delage name in 1906, and the last would not roll out of the Delage works until 1953. Between those dates, plenty happened, including two world wars, and the Delage saga roughly coincided with the peak years of the machine age as well as the golden age of classic cars.  Solidly built and engineered by open and innovative minds, the Delage was a car for the ages.  It's even in the name; "de l'age" is French for "of the age"…

My copy of Griff Borgeson's Sports and Classic Cars points out that Delage was one of the few car makers during the classic era (roughly 1925-50) to gain fame for small,  lightweight   racing cars as well as luxurious road yachts.  And unlike Bugatti, which succeeded at selling racers and failed with big tourers, the engineering of Delage racers diverged from the touring models, reflecting different concerns. One unifying concern throughout, however, was a concern for stopping power. Delage offered the first production cars with four wheel brakes and was among the first to offer servo-assisted brakes.  Even after the bankruptcy-motivated takeover of Delage manufacture by Delahaye in 1935, Louis Delage insisted that his cars feature hydraulic brakes, while Delahaye mostly stayed with mechanical brakes until the postwar era.

The 1.5 liter Delage Grand Prix racer pictured above is a good example of engineering to win road races. Low and light, it features a supercharged inline eight cylinder engine; this Model 15 S 8 was characterized by elegance of form and obsessive attention to detail, from the nickel chromium crankshaft to the provision of roller and ball bearings for the crankshaft and twin overhead cams…over 200 bearings according to the Revs Institute, which owns this car.  One detail which was new for the 1927 car pictured is that the exhaust was rerouted to the left side, owing to excessive heat under the driver's feet.  Rather than move the righthand steering leftward, violating GP convention, or continue with suffering drivers cooling their feet post-race in buckets of water, Delage re-engineered the whole engine, swapping sides for the intake and exhaust valves.  This paid off, as Delage racers won every single race on the GP schedule in 1927, capturing the manufacturer's championship, with Robert Benoist winning the driver's title.  Even the outside of the engine reflects the Swiss-watch perfectionism of its innards.  Of the six GP cars built for that epic 1927 GP season; half reside in the USA.

Having established its name as a maker of unbeatable race cars, Delage focused on luxury tourers during the late 1920s and early 1930s. The D8S model from 1932 pictured below uses pushrods to actuate the valves in the much larger (up to 4 liters) inline eight under that long hood; the bodywork was by Letourneur & Marchand, and the car was featured in the film Prends la Route ("Let's Take to the Highway")  from 1936.  

By this time the name Delage had become as strongly connected in the public mind to elegant upper crust carriages as to winning racers, a neat trick.  The 1934 D8S shown below was typical of Delage offerings from this time.  The sweeping lines are by Fernandez and Darrin (the same Darrin who designed custom Packards a few years later). These positive associations, and the stylistic attentions of designers like Dutch Darrin, might have insured Delage's survival in boom times.  But the Great Depression had steadily eroded sales, even in this rarefied class, and by 1934 Delage was nearing the end of the road as an independent manufacturer.

Delahaye*, maker of trucks and more mainstream cars until it took a more upmarket direction in the early 1930s, took over manufacture of Delage cars in 1935, but allowed Louis Delage a degree of independence. To their credit, Delahaye management declined to simply slap Delage labels on the junior line of Delahayes.  In fact, the new Delages appearing in 1936 weren't really junior versions of anything, featuring Delahaye chassis with independent front suspension.  Below the 3.5 liter Delahaye 135, there was a new Delage D6/70 with a 3 liter version of the 135 engine.  Above the 135, a new Delage D8-120 appeared.  This had a new inline eight based on adding 2 cylinders to the Delahaye 135 for a smooth luxury cruiser.  Neither engine appeared in any Delahaye.  The D8-120 below was bodied by Henri Chapron in 1937.

External exhausts added a dashing touch of style.  These were usually featured on the D8-120, rather than on the smaller D6/70.

Delage, like most French luxury makers, would stay with right-hand drive until the 1950s. Another common feature on French luxury cars was the pre-selector transmission, in this case a Cotal electromagnetic unit with four speeds forward (and also, oddly, in reverse) which was adopted from Delahaye.  The selectors for this gearbox are to the right of the steering wheel... 

The car shown below is a measure of the degree of independence Delahaye granted to Louis Delage, and also of their budget for new race cars.  It was designed and built in 1936, the first year of the new combine, as a streamlined GP car at a time when competitors, including the Auto Union and Mercedes, were experimenting with fully-enclosed as well as open-wheel racers.  The radical, light alloy bodywork by Labourdette featured a "Vutotal" wraparound windshield and side windows with no "A" or "B" pillars to interrupt the view.  The slim center windshield pillar offered little visual interruption…and no roof support.  

Even more startling than the streamlined teardrop bodywork was the completely new, light alloy 4.5 liter V12 engine under the hood. The otherworldly effect was reinforced by the dorsal fin centered on the car's tail, an item that had recently appeared on the rear-engined Tatra streamliners from Czechoslovakia…The innovative racer crashed at the Tourist Trophy GP in England. Delahaye used the engine design as the basis for its successful Type 145 GP racer, but that car had open wheels and bodywork.*

The Vutotal side windows, along with a more subdued dorsal fin, were also featured on a series of aerodynamic D8-120 coupes built by Letourneur & Marchand starting in 1937.  A dozen of these coupes were finished before the German invasion of France, and one was shown at the New York World's Fair in 1939 and 1940...

At least one D8-120 was bodied in 1939 by Figoni & Falaschi in a similar style to their cabriolets on Delahaye chassis. A similar Delahaye 165* roadster, with the V12 engine, was sent to the World's Fair.  

Also in 1936, Delahaye sponsored the construction of a streamlined, short wheelbase coupe on the 6 cylinder D6/70 chassis.  Louis Delage selected Figoni & Falaschi to design and build the body.  This car, especially when compared with the D8 boulevard cruiser shown above, shows how Delage addressed two different kinds of client.  This light, purposeful coupe took 4th place at the Le Mans 24 hours in 1937.  A Delage D6 took 2nd place at the 1939 race, the last before the war.

The coupe repeated at the first postwar Le Mans in 1949, taking 2nd place and winning its class. Emphasizing more compact, lighter, high performance cars might have been the right direction for Delage (it worked for Jaguar).  But that would have required making the cars in larger numbers and exporting them to North America, as French tax laws and an emphasis on economy cars made them unsaleable at home.  

A high percentage of the Delage race and road cars have survived, a tribute to their sturdiness as well as their star quality as art objects.

*Footnote: Delahaye 135 roadsters with exotic bodywork by Figoni & Falaschi are featured in our post entitled "Chasing the Streamline: Delahaye 135 MS" in the archives from 5/30/17, and also in "Roadside Attraction: Rolling Sculpture at the North Carolina Museum of Art", from 12/31/16. The Delahaye 145 GP car and its 165 road car relatives are shown in "Dreyfus and the Million-Franc Delahaye" from 11/22/15.


Photo credits:  

Top thru 4th: Paul Anderson
5th: wikimedia
6th:  imcdb.org
7th:  rmsothebys.com
8th thru 12th from top:  the author
13th & 14th:  patrimoineautomobile.com
15th:  vintagemotorssarasota.com
16th & 17th:  24 heures du Mans-Banque d'images
18th (bottom):  1938 D8-120 Super Sport bodied by De Villars, photographed by the 
author.

Lost Roadside Attraction: Luigi Chinetti Motors

Our recent brief history of Zumbach's Motor Service* alluded to a neighbor that arrived midway through the famous shop's residency in Manhattan, that being Luigi Chinetti's Ferrari showroom and service garage.  It arrived in the early 50s, after Zumbach's had gained national fame for its work on automotive exotica like Bugattis, Alfa Romeos and Duesenbergs.  Perhaps Chinetti thought Zumbach's might offer a deep pool of master mechanics who might be enticed to move next door as his fledgling business expanded; more likely, he knew that the kind of people who drove Bugattis and Lagondas might be interested in Ferraris, and could afford them...

That was certainly true of Briggs Cunningham*, who bought the very first Ferrari sold in the United States from Luigi Chinetti in 1949. This Tipo 166* Spyder Corsa pictured above, built the year after Ferrari's 1947 production start, features cycle fenders which could be removed for open-wheel races.  Before selling this car to Cunningham, Chinetti won the Spa 12 Hours race in September 1948 with it.  

Cunningham's spider has a style which preceded the famous 166 Superleggera Touring barchetta (little boat), with which Luigi Chinetti had won the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1949, his third overall win there, having covered most of the miles (and over 22 hours) himself. In the photo above, he's shown at this race, where he beat several cars with engines much larger than the 2 liter V12 in his little red "boat".

The Cunningham sale preceded the establishment of the Chinetti showroom.  By the time the showroom was up and running at 780 Eleventh Avenue in Manhattan, Chinetti was able to mount an impressive display of cars at the New York Auto Show.  His display for the 1954 World of Motor Sports in New York is shown below.  Left to right, the cars under the Ferrari banner Chinetti shared with O.S.C.A. dealer Alfred Momo include a Vignale-bodied coupe (likely a 225S), a 375 competition spider by Pinin Farina, a 250 Europa by Vignale, a Squalo (shark) single-seat racer which ran in F2 races for 1953 and would be eligible in F1 for 1954, and a dark colored OSCA* with white hood and trunk lids.  The car right of the OSCA looks like a Stanguellini, perhaps a part of Alfred Momo's Maserati and etceterini display. Maseratis and Siata V8s* can be glimpsed in the distance... 

By the late 1950s, the modestly-sized showroom space at 780 Eleventh Avenue was well-furnished (one hesitates to say "littered") with road-going and racing Ferraris, new and used. In the photo below, we can detect a Pinin Farina coupe (looking very much like a 410 Superamerica Series 2 from 1957) to the left of a Pinin Farina 250GT cabriolet in back, while the foreground harbors a 250GT California spider and a barely visible single-seater. Photographer Mark Jaffe took this shot in 1962, and it's one of the rare views inside Chinetti's showroom, as the maestro disliked having his customers photographed. The wistful, nostalgic racing red glow is perhaps due to the photographer's reflection on the five figures Chinetti would've asked him for any of these cars in '62, and the (minimum) seven figures any of them would fetch now…

Two years later, early in 1964, a resourceful photographer snapped these Ferrari road racers being unloaded for a season's duty with Luigi Chinetti's North American Racing Team. Founded in 1958 to promote Ferrari sales through racing success, NART received the latest competition cars from the factory in Maranello. In what looks like a successful case of industrial espionage below, it seems like a hidden spy camera has recorded the delivery of a mid-engined 275P that will compete in that year's Sebring 12 Hours.  

Another reason I wondered about industrial espionage is that these photos surfaced in the Henry Ford Museum (now simply called The Henry Ford) collection, and 1964 was the beginning of the legendary battles between the Ferraris and the just-developed Ford GT40.* In the photo below, however, the lucky pilot seems to be looking right at the camera, so my suspicion of secret sleuthing by Ford was dismissed. Ford might indeed have done some advance sleuthing, just not on this Manhattan street...

The cars look appealingly fresh, displaying taped lids and their Italian "on test" plates. And there was a front-engined Ferrari delivered that day too; the GTO64 below shows the fresh new body design featuring a steeply contoured windshield contrasting with the abrupt chop of the flat-windowed "tunnel roof" at the rear.  The car crouches behind the transporter framework like a caged beast.  Once released, this car (or one of its sisters) would win the Daytona 2000 Kilometers in February 1964, in the hands of Phil Hill and Pedro Rodriguez. And the 275P? In March, 275Ps would finish 1st and 2nd at the Sebring 12 Hours, with a similar 330P in third, followed by three Ford-powered Shelby AC Cobras.  Chinetti's (and Ferrari's) deep and wide racing experience, however, would hold off the mid-engined Ford juggernaut, especially at Le Mans, for a couple years longer.  Maybe Ford really did need somebody with a spy camera...

*Footnotes:  Zumbach's is described in this essay series in "Before Cars and Coffee There Was Zumbach's" from 4/11/18. Ferrari model numbers in this period reflected the displacement of individual cylinders. Thus a 12 cylinder 166 was a 2 liter car.  But as Ferrari soon branched out into building inline 4 and 6 cylinders, you had to know that a 750 Monza was a 4 cylinder car to realize it was a 3 liter, just like the 250GT V12.  A brief history of Briggs Cunningham's namesake cars is featured in "A Moment Too Soon" from 4/15/17.  His later success with the Jaguar E-Type is reviewed in "Racing Improves the Breed" in the archives from 8/13/17.  The OSCA saga is featured in "Etceterini Files Part 7: Almost Famous" from 4/20/16;  there are notes on the Siata 208S and related Fiat 8V in "Etceterini Files Part 10" from 11/13/16.  Finally, the design and history of Ford's GT40 are surveyed in "Roadside Attraction---Shelby American Collection Part 2" from 12/31/17.

Photo Credits:

Top:  the author

2nd & 3rd:  Ian Avery-DeWitt

4th:  les24heures.fr

5th:  unknown photographer, posted on pinterest.com

6th:  Marcel Massini, featured at rmsothebys.com

7th:  Mark Jaffe

8th through 11th:  The Henry Ford collection (photographer unknown)

Roadside Attraction: 1st Impressions of the Academy of Art University Auto Museum

It's been a long time since I walked past a showroom window displaying Packards, and I can't remember ever seeing like-new vintage Bugattis, Duesenbergs or Delahayes on display.  But you can see these great makes, and others which expired long before today's dreary corporate fad for labeling makes mere "brands", if you visit a former Chrysler dealership now occupied by San Francisco's Academy of Art University Automobile Museum. It's a long moniker, but then again it's a big collection, with around 240 cars in all, of which 52 are on display at their 1849 Washington Street showrooms as part of a rotating display that changes every autumn.  Before entering, you catch a glimpse of two cars sharing nothing but an appealing roundness of form: a lightweight Alfa Romeo 2500 road racing coupe built right before World War II, and behind it a lush boulevardier, a Delahaye 175 from the immediate postwar period...

Standing nearby, there's one of the 17 Bugattis bodied in the Atalante style; it's a Type 57 from 1937 and is believed to have been used originally by Jean Bugatti.

This Type 57 features the flat, horseshoe-shaped radiator rather than the vee-shaped prow of the lower-chassis Type 57S and SC. No matter; it has enough presence to distract attention from some imposing land yachts across the showroom floor...

The 1926 Belgian Minerva pictured above featured a sleeve-valve 6.6 liter six cylinder engine built upon Knight patents* and was bodied in aluminum by Le Baron in the United States.  It's thought to have been the New York Auto Show car when new.  

The very British Daimler Double Six from the same era is even larger, and features sleeve-valves like the Minerva, but here in a V12 engine.  The Hooper-bodied car was built for a bus company magnate in Australia.  Perhaps it was appropriate that his personal transport was bus-sized, but in the cavernous interior he would have avoided anything like the crowding associated with public transportation.

This Duesenberg Model J is one of around 480 produced by the Auburn Cord Duesenberg combine from 1928 to 1937, with 2 cars completed after the bankruptcy. That figure includes all variants, including the supercharged SJ, the JN  and the  short chassis, two passenger SSJ. Like many modern cars, the Duesenberg's 265 hp engine features twin overhead cams and four valves per cylinder.  Unlike any modern cars, however, the Duesy's engine is an inline eight... 

So is this Auburn 851 boat tail Speedster introduced in 1935.  The body design, by Gordon Buehrig (who also designed the revolutionary 1936 Cord) was actually a clever restyling of the previous V12 boat tail.  The Speedster was built for two years, and with supercharging, the flathead 280 cubic inch engine would propel the car to 100 mph. 

*Museum Notes and Thanks:  
I want to thank Gogo Heinrich for arranging a special tour of this collection, and Museum Coordinator Paul Borgwardt for spending over two hours with our group, graciously opening up engine compartments and answering questions. Tours are normally available on Tuesdays from 11 AM to 1 PM, and on Thursdays from 2 PM to 4 PM.  Museum proceeds go to the Rotary Club, and Boys and GIrls Club.  Tours can be scheduled at the web site: academyautomuseum.org.

*Car Notes:  The Museum seems to have an interest cars with sleeve valves, and has a rare
Willys Knight roadster. There's more to say about Duesenbergs as well, and we'll get there eventually.  And we haven't even started on the Packards, the Stutz Super Bearcat, the Delage and Delahaye, or the Talbot Lagos...

Photo credits:  All photos are by the author. 

Forgotten Classic: Adrian Squire's Namesake Car

Adrian Squire's habit of sketching cars in class was not unique among schoolboys, especially not among English lads.  What was unique was his engineering talent and his skill at devising fetching visual forms.  And unlike the legions of other kids who followed his example of doodling dream cars in study hall (for  example, this writer), young Squire was able to get his dream car into production (well, something approaching production) when a modest inheritance fell into his lap.*

Judging by the expense of the components he specified for his sports roadsters and tourers, and the amount of hand work that went into assembling them, I've always assumed that he spent the entire inheritance.  He was aiming at the kind of clientele who bought Bugattis and Alfa Romeos, and in the matter of the price tag, at least, Squire hit the target.  

Squire's first car appeared in late 1934, when he was 24 years old.  Expensive components included a twin overhead cam inline four cylinder with a single Roots type supercharger, a pre-selector 4 speed gearbox from ENV, giant 15 inch diameter hydraulic drum brakes, and a chassis with deep side members and cross bracing aimed at a level of rigidity uncommon on English roadsters.  Despite this, some cracks appeared upon early chassis, and it was thought they resulted from enthusiastic use of those brakes.  And despite provisions like twin water pumps and a big, finned oil cooler, the 1496 cc (69 x 100 mm cylinders) R1 engine sourced from British Anzani (originally a subsidiary of the Italian aero engine firm) could be troublesome.

The prototype and at least one subsequent car was clothed in an elegant interpretation (shown below) of traditional English lines built by Vanden Plas on the short (102 inch wheelbase) sports chassis. Vanden Plas also built a 4 place open tourer with similar lines on a 125 inch wheelbase, but the logic of Squire's high-strung small displacement engine (110 hp in supercharged form) seemed to argue for the smaller car.  As with 1.5 liter Maseratis, the earliest Ferraris and most OSCAs*, the idea was to get a lot of performance out of small engine displacements, though not without large displacements of cash...

Note the tidy way the hood louvers on this Vanden Plas roadster echo the angle of the radiator and the windshield.  Also note the way the brake drums fill the opening back of the lacy network of wires in those wheels.  

The tapered tail and swoopy fenders wrap up a package that was long considered the quintessential British roadster…that is, by anyone lucky enough to actually see one.  Owing to high prices (over $5,300 in 1935 dollars for this roadster) there were few orders for Squire's brainchild. The firm made an attempt to reduce prices with a "skimpy" model bodied by Markham and aimed at racers, but after producing a total of 7 cars, declared bankruptcy in 1937. Adrian Squire then went off to work for engineer W.O. Bentley at Lagonda, and died during a bombing raid in 1940. He was thirty years old...

After the bankruptcy, enthusiast Val Zethrin bought the remaining parts and manufacturing rights, and produced another three Squire cars before the war started.  One of these 3 cars is featured above and below in the color shots.  The body on this car was built in England by the Corsica Body Works, and during a restoration by a recent owner the body was modified for a sleeker profile.  For historians this raises questions of originality and authenticity*, but there is no doubt in the minds of most observers about the car's beauty. This Squire Corsica roadster lives at the Academy of Art University car collection in San Francisco, and we will soon be featuring some of her garage mates...

*Footnote: For another story about how to spend an inheritance making sports cars, see "Timing is Everything: Reventlow Saga" from 6/2/17, about the Scarab racers. The OSCA adventure is treated in "Almost Famous" from 4/20/16, while the question of "Authenticity vs. Originality" is reviewed in our archives on 6/11/17 in a history of the Bugatti Atlantic.

Photo credits:
All color photos: the author
7th from top:   pinterest.com
8th:  simeonemuseum.org

Lost Roadside Attraction: Before Cars and Coffee, There Was Zumbach's

Ralph Stein's The Great Cars, published in 1967, was almost as much a memoir of a life spent chasing classic cars as it was a depiction of the machines themselves.  Many of the cars he describes were encountered at Zumbach Motor Service in Manhattan. Zumbach's, as it was called by its fans, was more than a service and repair facility.  It was a kind of motoring shrine, and a meeting place where lovers of exotic machinery could meet to exchange technical information and racing lore. Seven decades or so before there was anything like "cars and coffee", there was Zumbach's.  In the decade preceding World War II, if you had an ailing Bugatti or Alfa Romeo or Duesenberg, and you were somewhere on the East Coast, you took it to Zumbach's.  By the early 1950s, Zumbach's fame had spread so far that actor Gary Cooper drove his Lagonda from Hollywood to New York once a year to the garage for tuning, and a collector from Michigan shipped his Talbot Lago there for expert attention.  Zumbach's built a famous racing car too...

This is Halley's Comet, a kind of early road racing hot rod based upon a modified Mercedes chassis for car collector McClure Halley.  The car was powered by an engine from the legendary Harry Miller, a high school dropout and intuitive engineer whose power plants ruled American tracks in the 1920s through  40s. Miller designed engines which inspired the Duesenberg brothers and also led to the Offenhauser engines which dominated the Indy 500 for decades.  In Halley's Comet, the engine is a Miller 151, a  twin-cam inline four with four valves per cylinder. The photo above, taken around 1935, shows Zumbach's team lined up behind their handiwork. The photo below shows the completed car as it competed at the Vanderbilt Cup Races in 1936. Today Halley's Comet is restored, and has hit the concours circuit...

Swiss mechanic Werner Maeder had joined Zumbach's in 1925, and took over the business in 1947 after the death of founder Charles Zumbach. Like Harry Miller, he was of the intuitive school of engineering and mechanics. In the photo below, he listens attentively to the idling straight eight of a Bugatti Type 57.

By summer of 1951, when the picture below was taken at Zumbach's for The Saturday Evening Post, phrases like "classic car" and "sports car" had begun to seep into American English.  GIs stationed in Britain had encountered small, nippy roadsters like MG's TC, and that car was credited after the war with making sports cars (and amateur road racing) affordable Stateside. Late in 1949 the Jaguar XK120* appeared, and by the early 50s it transformed American road racing as well as the U.S. market for imported cars, making performance previously attainable only in cars costing $12,000 (a fortune in 1950) available for the price of a Cadillac.  With its advanced twin overhead cam inline six and swoopy mix of modern and traditional lines, it formed a link to prewar classics like the Lagonda parked behind it, and the Bugatti lurking in the garage entry...

…and to cars like the Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 B, shown below with Maeder at the wheel and owner McClure Halley observing a road test in Central Park.  Today these cars would be welcome in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, but in 1951 some of them were serving double duty as weekend racers and grocery haulers.

While catering to wealthy collectors and racers, Maeder expanded the business to include maintenance and repair of everyday cars like Buicks, Hudsons and Studebakers, and advocated for careful and meticulous maintenance over the growing postwar trend of trading in cars every three years. When interviewed for the article in the Post, he was still driving the only car he'd ever bought new, a 1936 Buick.  In the photo below, he consults with the owner of a Singer*, another of the popular-priced British roadsters then entering the U.S. market, which would soon see Triumph TRs and Austin Healeys as well.

At the other end of the marketplace from Maeder's mainstream clientele, but just down the street (in fact, right next door), Luigi Chinetti would soon be seeking customers as the first U.S. distributor for something called the Ferrari. In 1951, not too many Americans knew about the car that Chinetti had piloted to victory in the 1949 Le Mans 24 Hours.  But the kind of people who cared about this achievement, and could possibly afford the eye-watering price tags on Chinetti's little red cars, were often the men and women who hung out at Zumbach's garage...

*Footnotes:  For more on the design and impact of the XK120, see "Game Changer" in these posts for 7/16/17. The Singer and its close relative, the HRG Twin Cam, are reviewed in the "Forgotten Classic" post for 3/28/18.

Photo Credits:

Top:  Zumbach Motor Service, photographer unknown

2nd:  vanderbiltcupraces.com

3rd thru 6th from top:  Hans Knopf for The Saturday Evening Post 

7th:  The Henry Ford collection