Louis Delage (1874 - 1947)

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Louis Delage (1874 - 1947)

Louis Renault
Louis Delage
Born in 1874, the flamboyant and extrovert Louis Delage had a lot of money and knew how to spend it. When he formed a company at Courbevoie-sur-Seine to design and build cars in 1905 he immediately set the aim to keep the quality high. Almost immediately he entered his cars in racing in the voiturette class, one of them finishing second in the 1906 Coupe de l'Auto. Delage continued to be one of the leading manufacturers in pre-WW1 voiturette racing. Albert Guyot won the 1908 GP des Voiturettes at Dieppe with a de Dion engined Delage.

Soon the factory proceeded to manufacture their own three litre four cylinder racing engine and with it Paul Bablot went on to win the 1911 Coupe des Voiturettes at Boulogne and 1913 GP de France at Le Mans (see Car Reviews: Delage Type X). Sales improved with racing success and the company could expand facilities. For 1913 Louis Delage went into full Grand Prix racing with a 6.2 litre car, making no secret that his ambition was to build the best and fastest racing cars in the world.

At the French Grand Prix at Amiens the Delage proved to be the fastest of the field, Albert Guyot fighting with the Peugeots for the lead when he suffered a puncture and the mechanic, eager to fix the problem, jumped off too soon and got run over. After taking the mechanic back to the pits for medical attention Guyot finally finished the race in a disappointing 5th position. Next year René Thomas went on to win the Indianapolis in a similar Delage.

For the 1914 French Grand Prix Delage developed the three most advanced GP cars in the field featuring four wheel brakes, and an engine designed by Artur-Léon Michelat with twin camshafts, four desmodromic valves per cylinder, two twin dual-throat Claudel carburettors and a multitude of ball bearings. After being fastest in practice the cars were troubled by technical problems during the race, Arthur Duray finally finishing in 8th place. Soon afterwards the First World War began and the Delage factory changed to Army vehicle production.

When the almost insignificant black and white posters bearing the words "Mobilisation generate" appeared on the walls of Paris in August 1914, the life of a nation was changed and thousands of plans for pleasure or business had to be thrown to the winds. Louis Delage in his factory at Courbevoie, saw Michelat, his chief engineer, set the uninspiring task of grooming horses in the Grand Palais. His works manager, in the uniform of a corporal, was put behind 375 mm gun. Guyot, his chief race driver, became a private in the infantry, quickly in trenches on the eastern border.

As a car manufacturer, Louis Delage was mobilized in his own works - silent and deserted works - which produced nothing, as 90 per cent of the staff had gone in response to the "mobilisation" order. But the country was quick to realize that it could not afford to keep its factories idle. Shells were needed in ever increasing quantities and, with few exceptions motor car factories were converted to shell-producing factories.

This meant that men were called back from the front and set to work, under military orders, in the buildings they had vacated a few months earlier. Once started, a shell factory ran almost without attention, leaving the engineers free for more advanced work. Thus Louis Delage began to think of the car he would put on the market when the war was over, as wars, fortunately, did come to an end.

The 4 Wheel Perrot System of Braking



He thought it should be a high-class 6-cylinder. In his moments of enthusiasm Delage declared that it would be equal to the Rolls-Royce - "and much more modern." It would have four-wheel brakes. Indeed, all Delage cars from that time onward should be equipped with the Perrot system of braking front and rear. DeIage had used these brakes on his cars entered for the 1914 French Grand Prix and was so convinced of their value that he secured world's rights for their use.

Henri Perrot (1883-1961), a trained engineer for a long time connected with Brasier, had taken up the position of chief engineer to Argyll, in Scotland, and in four years had induced more than a thousand conservative Britishers to purchase his cars with brakes front and rear. The mobilization order brought Perrot back to France post haste and the military authorities gave him the rank of corporal (the rank attained by a certain "field runner" fighting on the German side) in the Balloon Corps, the nearest France then possessed to a Flying Corps.

Perrot spent most of his time counting tyres stacked in impressive piles on one of the wide boulevards at Versailles. By mounting these tyres in a ring and leaving a small gap at one point they formed a retreat which was quickly garnished with drawing office material. In the same unit was Charles Waseige, chief engineer to the Farman Company, also a brake enthusiast. Perrot and Waseige worked together in their tyre-walled office on brake details for the post-war Delage car, until an order sent them to the Lorraine-Deitrichfactory in a new organization to examine and report on all German aviation engines captured or brought down under fire.

Louis DeIage was both an engineer and a motorist. The distinction is of importance. Not only did he indicate main features of design, but he conducted all the preliminary road testing himself. He never carried a mechanic, as mechanics had a habit of repairing defects and saying nothing about them, just to keep the boss in good humour. Thus, while the battle line swayed from the Channel to the Vosges, Delage supervised his shell-producing factory, spent all his spare time on the designs of his new car and covered thousands of miles testing and retesting it.

The Armistice



With the Armistice at the end of 1918, shells ceased to have any importance and a reconversion was made to car production, with an eye on the first Salon to be held in October 1919. Louis Delage looked around for a demonstration which would convince the public of the model he was prepared to offer. The shortest distance from Paris to Nice was about 620 miles and to the motorist of the time it represented a two-day journey; if the car arrived on the morning of the third day it was not necessarily discredited. Louis Delage decided that with his "war baby" he could make the run between breakfast and dinner. Retrospectively the run was uneventful. Leaving Paris at dawn, he was eating dinner on the Promenade des Anglais 16 hours later, having beaten the express train by a substantial margin.

Delage had demonstrated the practical value of four-wheel brakes and the speed and reliability of the new Delage. There was no flag-waving when he arrived; no official reception. Nearly a century ago a demonstration of this nature was necessary to prove to a sceptical public that four-wheel brakes were an important safety factor. To-day it would be impossible to sell a car without them. The Delage was a high-grade, rather costly car, but even only 30 years on the cheapest mass-produced model would have been equal to it (if not superior) in suspension. It had no windscreen wiper, no indicators and when rain fell heavily the car was brought to a standstill. Its tyres were inflated to a pressure of more than 50 p.s.i. There was however one thing worth celebrating back then...in 1919 the gendarmes were not provided with motor-cycles - so the Delage had no trouble pulling away from a cycle bound law enforcer.

Immediately after the war Delage was back producing a 5.15 litre six cylinder car for sprint and hillclimbing that proved to be very successful especially in the hands of René Thomas. It took until 1923 before Delage was back in Grand Prix racing, this time with the highly complex 2LCV featuring a four o.h.c. V-12 engine. The car was built and tested in 120 days, the engine built in less than 8 weeks. Except for some experiments, the 2LCV ran during the following year without blowers but for 1925 the 1,983 cc, V-12 engine came with twin Roots supercharges, improving the power to an unheard of 190 hp at 7,000 rpm and the top speed to 215 km/h. The car had a chassis incapable of handling this much power and the car's full potential was thus not realized. That did not hinder it from taking a double victory at the French Grand Prix (Robert Benoist winning from Louis Wagner), and a triple victory at the Spanish Grand Prix (Albert Divo, Robert Benoist, René Thomas).

For the new formula in 1926 Delage produced a straight eight 1 1/2 litre car. Once again no expense was spared and the result was one of the great Grand Prix classics. No less than 62 roller and ball bearings were used in the remarkable engine constructed by Albert Lory. The cars were not ready for the French GP but made their debut at the Spanish GP at San Sebastian. At the race a serious defect appeared, the heat from the exhaust pipe turned the cockpit into a furnace and the drivers had to be given medical treatment while holes were cut in the cars before reserve drivers could take over. The problem reappeared at the British Grand Prix at Brooklands but Senechal/Wagner still managed to take the victory. After that the cars were sent back to the factory for a drastic rebuild.

1927 was the year of Delage's greatest triumph. The rebuilt cars swept the board, taking five Grand Prix victories and the World Championship for the team. At the end of the season after achieving his goal and with costs running sky high Louis Delage decided to split the racing team and to sell the GP cars. From that point on it went only downwards. Delage was one of several French manufacturers that suffered from the hard economic times of the early 30s. Close to bankruptcy, the Delage Company was bought in 1935 by Walter Watney, the owner of the principle dealership in Delage cars in Paris. While still nominally in command Delage was paid a small monthly pension to keep him invisible. Selling his possessions one by one he died as a poor man in 1947.

Under Watney the name Delage was saved in a way so that the general public hardly was aware of that anything had happened. Under the new name "Societe Nouvelle des Automobiles Delage", Delahaye (under Charles Weiffenbach) produced cars with Delage name on the radiators in a corner of the Delahaye factory, Weiffenbach getting a 10% commission for each Delage sold while Watney got 5% for each Delahaye. Several Delage engines were incorporated in the Delahaye production line. In 1954 it was finally over, the names Delage, Delahaye and Hotchkiss disappeared forever from the car manufacturer scene.

Also see:
Lost Marques: Delage
Lost Marques: Delahaye
Car Reviews: Delage Type X
Honour Roll: Founding Fathers Of The Automotive Industry
Latest Classic Car Classifieds