Decauville automobile

Voitures automobiles Decauville was a French automobile maker, a subsidiary of Société Decauville, a company already famous for producing locomotives, located at Petit-Bourg, near Corbeil.

Established by Paul Decauville, the company was registered as Société des Voitures Automobiles Decauville in 1897 and the factory started producing automobiles in 1898. The first car was designed by Messrs Joseph Guédon and Gustave Cornilleau and the design was purchased for 250,000 French francs. Cornilleau was also taken on as chief engineer.

The car, a tiller-steered three-seater in the voiturette (cyclecar) class, was called a voiturelle. It had a peculiar structure, it featured independent suspension by transverse spring and two single-cylinder air-cooled engines produced by De Dion-Bouton sharing a common crankcase. The 498 cc (30.4 cu in) engine, allegedly producing 3 hp (2.2 kW; 3.0 PS), was mounted under the seat and drove the back axle through an unlubricated two-speed transmission. It had an advanced sliding-pillar front suspension, but no suspension at all in the rear.

Like many pioneer marques, including Napier and Bentley, Decauville entered motor races, winning the voiturette class of the 1898 Paris–Amsterdam–Paris Trail. Works drivers M. Gabriel and Léon Théry came first and second, with another Decauville third, in the voiturette class of the 1899 Tour de France Automobile. This was followed with class wins in the 1900 Bordeaux-Biarritz and Paris-Rouen-Paris Rallys. The marque also took the Daily Mail prize in the 1900 English Thousand Miles Trial.

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