Delaunay-Belleville
The SA des Automobiles Delaunay -Belleville was a French automobile manufacturer of luxury cars. The factory was located in St. Denis.
At the beginning of the 20th century it belonged to the French dream car and perhaps the most prestigious vehicles in the world. They were driven in that era, in the rich industrialists, bankers and monarchs had a driver, who took over the daily care of the vehicle as well as the debilitating steering on the usually not so perfectly maintained roads.
Louis Delaunay and Marius Barbarou founded the company in September 1903 as an independent company of the already existing since the 1860s the main company Delaunay - Belleville. Barbarous family owned a pressure cooker companies in St. Denis. The design of the boiler influenced the company. The same care that was essential when Boilers, was also expended in the design, premium materials and the handicrafts. Marius had experience through his work with Clément, Lorraine -Dietrich and Benz. He was responsible for design and construction. Only in 1904 the first car at Delaunay -Belleville was manufactured. Characteristic of the brand was the round grille.
The first models were powered by four-cylinder engines, so most of the following models received six-cylinder engines. The model H4 was a sedan with a 3600 cc six-cylinder engine. The HB 6 of 1911 was powered by a six-cylinder engine with five liters and an output of 30 hp. Because of their low vibration the cars of Delaunay -Belleville were in their era as unusually quiet. While most cars of this time possessed a drip lubrication system, were the vehicles of the brand Delaunay -Belleville among the first who possessed a system of pumps, with the oil for the lubrication came under pressure to the lubrication points.
Vehicles of Delaunay -Belleville already received by the later famous coachbuilders D' leteren, Labourdette and Mulhbacher their unusual body, which made her the " Face in the Crowd ".
Delaunay -Belleville were among the favorite cars of Tsar Nicholas II The Greek King George I and the Spanish monarch Alphonso XIII. possessed Delaunay - Belleville vehicles.
After the First World War, the identical engine type, the model line was initiated in 1919 continue to be used, but modernized. At the same time in 1922, a 12 -CV - P4B model was introduced with four-cylinder engine, which stemmed in large measure to a design of Renault. To stand out from the average production in 1931 two large chassis with American Continental straight-eight cylinder engines were introduced with displacements of 4 and 4.5 liters.
In the late 1920s, the Delaunay -Belleville lost their prestige and waved to the construction of trucks and military vehicles. The time of the cars that were usually operated by drivers who went to the end. The younger owners wanted and were able to drive themselves the care of the vehicles was not as time-consuming and even empires could occasionally after the global economic crisis no longer make any driver.
The last car of Delaunay -Belleville were a series of copies of the 13 -CV - middle-class Mercedes- Benz 230, which were presented as RI6 with independent suspension on all four wheels. They were produced until 1948 when the factory by Rovin taken and then this brand vehicles were produced.
Trivia
The famous French anarchist Jules Bonnot criminals used with a Delaunay -Belleville 12 CV (model 1910) together with his accomplices in December 1911 for the first time in the history of a car in a bank robbery.