The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
A French fancy with film-star looks
Although the motor car was largely invented in Germany, thanks to Gottlieb Daimler and Carl Benz, the French were the first great car enthusiasts. Indeed, many early cars on British roads were French.
In the early 20th Century, France spawned many carmakers, producing everything from flimsy voiturettes to big, stylish bolides – bearing such names as Bugatti, Salmson, Delage, Delahaye, Hotchkiss and many more – yet almost all of these had vanished by the 1950s.
Today, France has just three major car marques (Renault, Peugeot and Citroen), a few specialists plus Aixam, which makes dotty fibreglass-bodied minicars with 500cc engines.
However, there was one French firm that sought in the 1950s to build glamorous cars that combined Italian styling with American pizzazz unlike most other French cars at the time. That was Facel Vega.
From making aircraft components in 1939, Facel built special low-volume bodies in the late 1940s for many French carmakers, including Simca and Panhard. They also clad several early-1950s Bentleys with stunning bodywork that won high acclaim. But the switch to monocoque car assembly (with chassis and bodywork as one unit) killed that market, so in 1954 MD Jean Daninos created Facel Vega to make big, stylish coupes, powered mainly by American V8 Chrysler engines.
These sold well but sky-high French road taxes on bigengined cars meant almost 80% of Facel Vegas were sold abroad. Many famous people, including Sir Stirling Moss, drove Facel Vegas.
Around 1960, Daninos decided to build a smaller car, the Facellia, which could be sold competitively in France. Unfortunately, rather than source a well-tried 1.6 engine from a European manufacturer, Daninos had one designed and built from scratch.
It had twin overhead camshafts, but with two main bearings rather than the normal four or five. The cams flexed, valve timing went adrift and countless engines broke down. A new MD opted to replace all faulty engines with improved new ones. It was a brave move but the warranty costs bankrupted the company and it folded in 1964.
I once briefly sat in a Facel Vega in 1963 – it had charisma and style in abundance. Today they are seen all over the world at classic car shows and, even 50-60 years after they were built, they still exude that special, Gallic je ne sais quoi.