DB (car)

DB (until 1947 known as Deutsch-Bonnet) was a French automobile maker between 1938 and 1961, based in Champigny-sur-Marne near Paris. The firm was founded by Charles Deutsch and René Bonnet, an offshoot of the Deutsch family's existing coachbuilding shop which had been taken over by Bonnet in 1932. Immediately before the war the partners concentrated on making light-weight racing cars, but a few years after the war, starting with the presentation of a Panhard based cabriolet at the 1950 Paris Motor Show, the company also began to produce small road-going sports cars. By 1952 the company no longer had its own stand at the Paris motorshow, but one of their cars appeared as a star attraction on the large Panhard stand, reflecting the level of cooperation between the two businesses.

The company was defunct by 1961, as Deutsch and Bonnet's differing design philosophies hamstrung further cooperation. The number of DB's built is not certain; estimates of up to 2,000 cars are mentioned but more conservative numbers are closer to one thousand.

The business produced light sports cars, originally in steel or aluminium but subsequently with fibreglass bodies mainly powered by Panhard flat-twin engines, most commonly of 610, 744, or 848 cc. Deutsch was a "theoretical engineer who had a natural instinct for aerodynamics," while Bonnet was a more "pragmatic mechanical engineer".

The fibreglass bodies covered a tubular central beam chassis made from steel, with front wheel drive and four wheel independent suspension directly lifted from the Panhard donors. Until 1952 all DBs had been intended for competition purposes only.

Bonnet had been promised a works drive in an Amilcar Pégase in the 1936 French Grand Prix for sports cars, but when this failed to materialise they set about building their own racer. The 1938 alloy-bodied DB1 roadster was a special, built using the remains of a Citroën Traction Avant 11CV. The construction took seventeen months. A series of numbered successors followed. The close-roofed 1.5-litre DB2's career was hindered by the war and was sold later, without Deutsch ever using it. The DB3 was a monocoque project developed during the war, but was never built, as the improved pontoon-bodied DB4 took preference. With a central beam chassis with a forked cradle for the 1.5 litre Traction 7A-based engine (originally intended for the DB2) it was finished in July 1945, with most of the work having been carried out in secret during the occupation. The very similar 2-litre DB5 was finished soon thereafter. Their two specials both placed in the first postwar race in France, in Paris in 1945, being the only post-war cars entered. An open-wheeled DB7 appeared in 1947 (preceded by the heavy and large DB6 which saw very little action), after which the Automobiles Deutsch & Bonnet was officially formed.

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