François Lehideux
| François Lehideux | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 30, 1904 |
| Died | June 21, 1998 (aged 94) |
| Occupation | Industrialist |
| Employer |
Renault Ford Motor Company |
| Known for | Official in Vichy France |
| Title | Minister of Industrial Production |
| Term | July 1941 - April 1942 |
| Relatives | Fernand Renault (father-in-law) |
François Lehideux (30 January 1904 in Paris – 21 June 1998 in Paris) was a French industrialist and member of the Vichy government.
Lehideux was married to the daughter of Fernand Renault and soon became a leading figure in the Renault car company. He was assistant to Louis Renault and in this position convinced the head of the company to employ André Lefèbvre within the development department, Lehideux admiring Lefèbvre's bold ideas and feeling that Renault needed to modernise its designs in order to continue to lead the way in French automobile manufacture.
During his time with Renault, Lehideux made no secret of his ambition. A year after the outbreak of war Louis Renault held a meeting, on 3 September 1940, with the country's new leader, the Marshall Pétain, at which Renault received the reassurance he sought that the government wished him to remain at the head of his company. Renault at this time was greatly concerned that his brother's son in law, François Lehideux, was scheming with political contacts to take the top job at Renault. The incident also reflects the extent to which the right wing government of Pétain shared the interventionist approach to industry that had been evident in his left wing predecessor, prime minister Léon Blum, five years earlier. Government interventionism would be an important part of the story of the French auto-industry, most particularly regarding the Renault business itself, in the post-war decades. Following his unsuccessful pitch for the top job it was Lehideux who now left the company.
In October 1940 Lehideux was appointed to the headship of the COA, an organisation charged with smoothing relations between the German authorities and French auto-makers. He is credited with having successfully intervened in 1943 to block German plans to crate up Ford's newly completed car plant at Poissy for shipment to the company's Cologne location.
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