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After flirtations with electric vehicles and
radial engined motor cycles, he finally settled for a "proper"
Léon Bollée designed horizontal engined motor car. 1900 saw a
change to vertical engines and an expansion of the range to
include a 12 hp twin cylinder. A four cylinder 20 hp with pressed
steel chassis was introduced for 1902. Darracq was in the
forefront of pioneers of mechanical inlet valves, L-head engines,
pressed steel chassis and proper location of back axles using
torque control arms.
The star of the film "Genevieve" was a
Darracq.
Darracq also joined in racing – they built a
10 litre four cylinder monster for the 750kg formula of 1905 and a
200hp V8 driven by Hémery captured the Land Speed Record at 109.65
mph later in 1905.
1910 Darracq
In 1912 the firm succumbed to the vogue for
abolition of the poppet valve with a near disastrous range of
rotary valved cars under Henriod patents. In 1913 Alexandre
Darracq sold out again, this time to the British financial
interests who had previously taken over his British subsidiary. A
prime mover in this take over was Owen Clegg, who moved to Paris
to become Managing Director of the new company, with a capital of
20 million francs and its head office and works at 32 Quai Général
Gallieni in Suresnes, Paris. During the Great War, Darracq went
over completely to munitions production: weapons, ammunition and
even complete aeroplanes - in greatly expanded premises, of
course. The initial post war Darracq was a mildly updated version
of the pre-war side valve 4 cylinder 3 litre Type V to be joined
by Owen Clegg's 24cv side valve 4½ litre V8 Type A in 1920.
However in 1919, Darracq took over English Talbot (Talbot dated
from 1903 when Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury,
Waterford and Talbot, had begun importing Clement-Bayard parts and
assembling Clement-Talbot cars in a factory at Ladbroke Grove in
the West of London) and the resulting company merged in 1920 with
Sunbeam to form the Sunbeam Talbot Darracq group which quickly
came under the strong influence of the personality and ideas of
Sunbeam's Breton director, Louis Coatalen.
From late 1921 and the introduction of the
Louis Coatalen inspired 1½ litre ohv Type DB, the Suresnes built
cars were renamed as Talbot in France, although still badged as
Darracq when imported into Britain. Owen Clegg's Type A was
consigned to oblivion in 1922. Using the design work of Vincenzo
Bertarione and Walter Becchia, who had been poached from Fiat by
Louis Coatalen, Suresnes built the fabulously successful series of
1½ litre 2ohc "voiturette" racing cars, variously badged as
Darracq or Talbot-Darracq or Talbot, from 1921 to 1927 with
numerous class, and sometimes overall, victories at Brooklands and
on the continent. Meantime the touring range built at Suresnes was
expanded with the pushrod ohv 2120 cc 4 cylinder DS and the 6
cylinder 2538cc DUS and 2912cc TL. The range took a new direction
in late 1927 with the introduction of the 6 cylinder 1,997cc M67,
replacing all of the 4 cylinder models and later spawning the
larger K74, K75, P75, K78 and M75 6 cylinder models. Owen Clegg
finally succeeded in re-introducing an eight cylinder into the
range in 1929 with the 3822cc H78 Pacific, which was as
spectacularly unprofitable as its Type A ancestor.
 
The Suresnes works struggled on through the
depression until 1934 when there was a last spasmodic attempt to
revive the brand by adopting a pointlessly pretentious "Packard"
style radiator cowling and a thoroughly effective and practical
independent front suspension system patented by Coatalen in 1929.
Then Anthony Lago arrived at
Suresnes. Born in Italy, he trained as an engineer, rose to the
rank of Major in the Italian army during the Great War and
re-invented himself as a director of the Wilson Self Changing Gear
Co Ltd in the 1920s. He joined the Sunbeam board in the early
thirties and, as the STD group started to founder financially, he
seized his opportunity to re-finance, or in modern parlance lead a
management buy-out of the Suresnes part of the group.
His impact at Suresnes was
immediate and effective. He fired Bertarione and promoted Walter
Becchia. He re-introduced an attractively raked version of the
traditional Talbot radiator and rationalised the range around a
six cylinder image – Owen Clegg's straight eights were
half-heartedly updated with i.f.s. but only staggered on until the
stocks of built cars were remaindered in 1935. The range
eventually was composed of cars built with a choice of three
wheelbases, the Baby at 2.95m, the Master at 3.20m and the Major
at 3.45m into which could be fitted a choice of vertical pushrod
ohv 6 cylinder engines of 1997cc, or 2696cc, or 2996cc, or finally
3996cc. So, according to the depth of your wallet, you could order
a Baby with an engine of two litres, or three litres or 4 litres.
Only the smaller engine sizes came with a "silent" 4 speed
gearbox. As could be expected from his background, and the source
of his royalty income, the three and four litre cars were
universally fitted with the Wilson pre-selector gearbox. This of
course was available as an extra cost option on the smaller
engined cars. A range of appropriately elegant and stylish
bodywork was produced by the factory for these cars – two and four
seat cabriolets and two and four door saloons.
T 150 |
T 150 |
One of Lago's mainsprings was
his enthusiasm for competition and, even while he was engaged full
time in putting the production range in order, he was planning a
return to the race track for Talbot. His initial efforts centred
on the T150C, effectively an uprated 3 litre Baby with the
cylinder head re-designed in light alloy to provide hemispherical
combustion chambers using asymmetric rockers operating inclined
valves, but retaining a single camshaft and parallel pushrods.
This head boosted the power output from 80bhp to 110 bhp. Capacity
was soon increased to 3996cc for the Automobile Club de France's "Formule
Sport" in 1936 and output eventually approached 200bhp for the
engines fitted to the 2.65m wheelbase Lago SS models in 1937 to
1939. These cars had a distinguished competition career, winning
numerous continental "sports car" events and the TT at Donington
in 1937.
Their chassis provided a base
for some of the most fabulously elegant of pre-war French
coachwork. This was not just for show however, a Figoni et
Falaschi "goutte d'eau" coupé finished third at Le Mans in 1938.
After WW 2 Lago was quickly off the blocks with the mostly new 4½
litre 170bhp Lago Record, on whose design he had been working
since 1942. The capacity of the new twin camshaft engine with
short vertical pushrods to provide the hemispherical combustion
chambers had been chosen with a view to the 1½ litre supercharged
/ 4½ litre unsupercharged Grand Prix Formula anticipated post war.
The Lago Record followed on
the Talbot tradition of the thirties of providing relaxed high
speed touring in works coachwork of great quality and elegance, at
the expense of less than nimble handling and a fairly ruinous fuel
consumption. It was joined by a 4 cylinder 2.7 litre Baby version
in late 1949. Its initial success rapidly tailed off as the
motoring public realised that 2.7 litres could not do the job of
4.5 litres, given the modest reduction in wheelbase from 3.1m to
2.95m.
Lago had by this time taken
his eye off the ball somewhat to concentrate on his efforts in
what was now Formula 1. The 4½ litre Record engine was extensively
re-designed in 1948 in light alloy to give the engine for the T26C
Grand Prix single seater and its two seat sports T26GS derivative.
Talbot built some sixteen of these cars which were campaigned by
the works and by private owners from 1948 to 1954, sometimes in
competition with Lago SS or T150C cars from the thirties, updated
by private owners who found they could still be competitive.
Later versions of the engine
with twin ignition eventually produced some 250bhp. A T26C driven
by Louis Rosier won the Belgian Grand Prix in 1949 due to being
vastly more economical than the 1½ litre supercharged cars, some
of which were burning fuel at six times the rate of the Talbot.
Rosier won Le Mans in a T26GS in 1950 after driving all but two
laps himself. From then on it was downhill for Talbot. The firm
went into administration in 1951, but falling sales due to the
French fiscal regime for luxury cars prevented a recovery. The 4½
litre Grand Sport coupé gave way to its scaled down 2½ litre
sister, the T14LS in mid 1955 but even the lighter tubular chassis
and beautiful body of this car could not keep Talbot afloat. A
final attempt was made in 1959 to capture sales in the American
market with a BMW V8 engined version of the T14LS, the Lago
America, which was finally built with left hand drive. Despite
good press notices, this failed miserably and the remains were
eventually sold to Simca, who finished off the few Lago Americas
in the works by fitting side valve Ford V8s as provided in their
Vedette saloons.
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