Louis Coatalen

Louis Hervé Coatalen (11 September 1879 – 23 May 1962) was a Breton-born automobile engineer and racing driver who spent much of his adult life in Britain and took British nationality. He was a pioneer of the design and development of internal combustion engines for cars and aircraft.

Coatalen, the second son of J Coatalen, was born in the Breton fishing town of Concarneau and went on to study engineering at the École des Arts et Métiers at Cluny (France).

After serving his apprenticeship with De Dion-Bouton, Clément and Panhard et Levasseur he left France to work in England in 1900. After a short time with the Crowden Motor Car Company he joined Humber Limited in 1901 and was to become their chief engineer. He designed their 8-10 and 10-12 models. They were highly successful but their design was, unusually for Coatalen, totally conventional.

In 1906 aged 26 or 27 he went into partnership with bicycle manufacturer William Hillman. In 1908 he drove their Hillman-Coatalen car in the Isle of Man Tourist Trophy race.

The brief partnership was dissolved in 1909 and Coatalen moved from Coventry to Wolverhampton to join Sunbeam. He was appointed joint managing director (with William M Iliff) in 1914.

His first design was one of the outstanding light car designs of its day. In 1912 three 12-16s took the first three places in Dieppe's Coupe de l'Auto 2-day race for 3-litre cars. The first of the three cars was also third in the race for Grand Prix cars. But his designs rapidly became less innovative and he seemed to copy Peugeot developments rather than use his own.

Sunbeam cars won the Tourist Trophy races in 1914 and 1922. The Sunbeam cars that took the first three places in the 1923 French Grand Prix were said to have owed much to Fiat designs.

During World War I he designed aircraft engines for Sunbeam. On his death in 1962 Lord Sempill wrote to The Times to point out that Coatalen was one of the three leading designers of engines for aircraft and airships used by the RNAS in the First World War. The other two, he said, were W O Bentley and Sir Henry Royce.

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