WHEN LESS WAS MOR E
Most Delahayes wore flamboyant bodywork by prestigious French coachbuilders. This one was clothed by Abbey, a modest British bodyshop, and is an understated delight
YOU’VE SEEN THE picture and now you have questions, don’t you? To answer one: yes, that is a very Bentley-esque colour scheme, and it is absolutely arresting in the metal, glistening with a sumptuous yet discreet class that it is hard to associate with anything that is basically ‘gold’. The other, of course, is: what on Earth is it? One member of the Octane team insists on calling this car ‘the Riley’ but it is rather more exotic than that. Underneath that bodywork lies a Delahaye 135M chassis, a model you may be more familiar with when clothed in outrageously swoopy, heavyweight bodywork, or work-of-art-deco lines that do not necessarily make for a practical and usable car.
This might not have the slap-you-in-the-face aesthetics of some of the more extreme creations on this chassis, but it is a very pretty car and an extremely practical one. It is also unique, the only Delahaye 135 chassis known to carry this coachwork.
Delahaye was founded in Tours at the dawn of motoring, and became synonymous with 1930s opulence. As with so many of the great pre-war glamour marques, indeed like so many specifically French luxury-car makers who failed to reignite themselves when the hostilities ended, Delahaye’s fate was sealed by World War Two. It limped on until 1954, but its first properly new post-war car, the Chapron-bodied Type 235, failed to catch on in precisely the same way that Bugatti’s Type 101 and the Salmson E-72 proved to be last throws of the dice.
When this car was built in 1937, however, Delahaye was at the height of its powers. The Type 135 had been launched in 1935 and was to stay in production for nearly two decades, with gaps. It was powered by a truck-derived OHV straight-six engine of either 3227cc or 3557cc, fed by either a pair or a trio of Solex carburettors and driving through a four-speed gearbox, with a pricey ‘pre-selector’ option. The 135 enjoyed a successful competition career that helped to establish it, but it is better remembered for the extravagance applied to it by a roster of France’s most outré coachbuilders. Figoni & Falaschi, Pourtout, Chapron, Franay and Saoutchik all worked their magic on this chassis… along with Abbey of Acton.
Abbey? Well, yes, not exactly the most avant-garde wing of UK coachbuilding, as evidenced by the fact that it warrants only a small entry in Nick Georgano’s masterwork that makes up the third volume of the
Beaulieu Encyclopaedia of the Automobile. In a seven-year life, starting in 1930, it was set up by Arthur Compton in Merton and later moved to Acton. Its most prolific work was on the Wolseley Hornet, but it gained a reputation for stylish sporting four-seater bodywork – open or closed – and its designs were also used on Rovers, MGs, Fords, Vauxhalls and even Railtons. Just as things seemed to be going well, it took over Martin-Walter of Folkestone’s Wingham brand. Then, rather than thriving or catapulting itself into the big time, it seemed simply to disappear.
Despite the unusually extensive and well-researched history of this car, chassis 47456, there is nothing to explain why this previously workaday British coachbuilder and one of the true greats of pre-war motoring were brought together to create it. The person responsible can be assumed to be Count Doric Heyden, motorsport agent and Delahaye concessionaire of Park Lane, London. He imported the car in autumn 1937 and in December it appeared in Motor Sport magazine, no doubt to help promote the French exotic to a UK audience.
In an uncredited but catchily titled test ‘A Fine French Sports Car – a test in difficult conditions’, the Motor Sport team reached 91mph and said that far more might have been achieved but for such freezing weather that ‘the sewage farm at Brooklands was frozen over’. The Bendix brakes – ‘the feeling of a giant hand retarding the car’ – came in for particular praise, and the only criticism that could be made was that the gearchange was ‘too easy’ for enthusiasts. Seriously. Then again, when that Cotal electromagnetic change accounts for £43 of the total £1000 cost, it should be impressive.
For those unfamiliar, it is a wonderful and addictive system, and not really a pre-selector at all. Whereas with your Wilson or Cord, you select your gear and then dip the clutch to engage it, which is pretty good in itself, with the Cotal and its electromagnetic clutches you simply have super-smooth and instantaneous pedal-free changes using a quadrant sprouting from the steering column. It is epicyclic, but might best be described as a pre-war DCT. It was popular with top-end French manufacturers, but had few takers in the UK.
An early owner of this 135M who enjoyed this sophisticated system was Gordon Sutherland, who owned Aston Martin prior to David Brown. The Delahaye was then sold on to Eric Barnard in December 1942 with 22,000 miles recorded, for the princely sum of £200. That’s quite some depreciation. As well as improving the Delahaye, including fitting what appears from photos to
have been a modified Riley grille, correspondence shows how test pilot Barnard feverishly set about unearthing its history and the black magic of its mechanicals. Sadly he died in 1945 testing a Fairey Mk1 Firefly in Australia. A year later his Belgian widow, Yvonne Jamar, sold the 135M to HWM legend George Abecassis for £900. That was sufficient for her to buy two houses!
Shortly afterwards it was sold to William Tipping of Sussex who, in 1947, took it to County Wicklow, Ireland, where DXE 66 stayed for almost 70 years… and proved its mettle. William Tipping’s son, Roger, recalled: ‘I remember my father proudly telling his two young sons that we are now doing 100mph on the main road to Wicklow town! I was born in 1958 and have many memories of this car, sadly most while it was not running.’
Problems with the pre-selector transmission and the engine caused it to be laid up until the mid-1970s, when a new owner, Pat Wynne, put it back on the road. It acquired its paint scheme under the next-but-one owner, Olaf Costelloe, who bought the Delahaye at the turn of the 1980s and kept it until 2015.
When Costelloe sold it, the 135M immediately left Ireland and wound up with a Belgian collector who commissioned a full restoration at L’Atelier des Coteaux in Blérancourt in France. The works started in November 2015 and took nearly four years. Once finished, the Delahaye headed for the Zoute Concours, where it was runner-up in the pre-war open class. More recently it came to the UK to ‘do’ the 2020 concours season, sent by its Belgian owners with enthusiastic guardian Pedro Cappelle, who revels in driving it and clearly adores it. With the calendar decimated, however, sadly he will not be driving it back to Belgium. The car is now staying in the UK to be sold by Richard Biddulph’s Vintage and Prestige in Northampton (www.vandp.net).
And that is where Octane catches up with it.
It is a wonderful car to behold, imposing but in a quietly self-assured way rather than with the landyacht dimensions of some of its brethren. It is roomy and spacious for four and tastefully finished. There are OS dials within OS dials, ornate levers for lights and horns to the right of the steering wheel and an effective handbrake in the footwell to the right of the driver.
To start, you push the button to wake the magnetos, then push in the ignition and wait for the steady churn to catch and settle into a deceptively lazy voix basse.
Before moving off you must operate the central lever that many might assume to be a gearlever, but which determines whether the Delahaye goes forwards or backwards. You should probably resist the urge to test how it performs if you choose to use all four gears in reverse, which you can. We chickened out promptly after changing up to third.
The 135M – with the larger engine and triple Solexes, this car has 115bhp – requires a decent footful of revs to get off the line, but thereafter it accumulates speed pretty casually, the big unit surprisingly peppy as those Solexes gobble fuel. It’s far easier to imagine this engine in a sports car than in a truck. As the Delahaye zips adroitly along country lanes you can really feel the race-car roots. It feels quite small on the road and the driving position allows you to navigate the apexes well, via the wingtips and the huge Marchal lights. The firm, high-geared steering is full of feel through the huge, four-spoke wheel, while the gearbox’s high ratios allow you to stir the 135M effortlessly up to 70mph in third, seemingly unstressed as it nudges towards the 4000rpm redline.
Cornering is assured except when bump-steer or too much juice can throw it off-line, yet it always seems manageable, aided by that steering, which is very direct
‘You should resist the urge to test how it performs if you use all four gears in reverse, which you can’
and lacks the vagueness found in so many pre-war cars. The André adjustable suspension is no longer operative even though all the knobs are there for it, but with its independent front suspension (by transverse leaf spring) the 135M is still pretty accomplished in its handling.
We might take issue with Motor Sport’s verdict on the brakes, which initially don’t feel as if they are going to do anything but eventually bite pretty well, just when you are really starting to sweat that your foot will go all the way to the floor. Truth be told, they are decent for the era… if you have sufficiently small feet not to snag in the narrow gap between the impressively responsive organ throttle and the brake pedal sprouting through the bulkhead. There is a third pedal, offset well to the left, perhaps to acknowledge that it is largely vestigial. Even so, it takes a few moments of adjustment to remember
not to use the light clutch. When you reach that point, however, the combination of that magical gearchange at your fingertips with this agile chassis and slugger of an engine is incredibly nimble and engaging to drive. The problem with the Cotal is that you lose drive if the electrics are out, but when it’s working it is sublime.
As a package, this Delahaye 135M really is terrifically impressive and huge fun to drive, with enough power to keep even the most jaundiced enthusiast beaming. That this Anglo-French collaboration has all the go and rather less of the show (yet without sacrificing its tasteful beauty) just makes it more appealing.
Now it’s my turn to ask a question: why would anyone in the UK who wanted a Delahaye get it bodied by Abbey? Or, why would anyone who wanted an Abbey-bodied car decide that they needed it on a Delahaye chassis? We’ll never know now, but I’m extremely glad they did.