Facel Vega Excellence Sedan

FACEL is an acronym for Forges et Ateliers et Constructeurs Eure et Loire (for an overview of the company history, please refer to my previous article at https://velocetoday.com/archives/104. The Excellence debuted at the Paris Auto Show in October, 1956, and 152 were produced from 1958 until 1964. My favorite quote about it comes from esteemed author Richard Langworth, who wrote in the November, 1985 number of Collectible Automobile that, “The Excellence is a large vehicle…better suited as a Car of State rather than a daily driver.”

When new, it really had no direct competition, except for perhaps the Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, made from 1957-9. Yes, BMW had the “Baroque Angel,” Mercedes had the “Adenauer,” Lancia had the Flaminia sedan, and, on the home front, there was Lincoln and the Imperial LeBaron, but only the Eldorado was a close companion. And this is what attracted Dr. Zeiger to the car; he is an authority on the Eldorado Brougham, having owned a number of them. In fact, he is an authority on a lot of automotive history, having been on the National Board of Directors of the Classic Car Club of America, Past National President of the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Club, and Technical Advisor to the Cad-LaSalle Club. He started early, at age 18, restoring a ’53 Coupe de Ville in his parent’s basement garage, and has owned over 250 cars since then. He financed his way through medical school by buying, fixing, and selling cars, and by the time he finished his medical training he had to move eleven cars. At age 20, he joined the Classic Car Club in the Midwest Region, and was introduced to a wonderful group of mentors, including Tony Hulman, Bob Joynt, and Gene Perkins, and they have been a source of strength and knowledge to him subsequently.

He started looking for an Excellence many years ago, but there were few in the US. He found one collector with a group of 3 for sale, but all of them were so badly rusted that there wasn’t one restorable car between them. Twelve years ago he bought this car, from a Florida pharmacist named Bill Shaw, who was not a car guy, but got the car in lieu of a debt, and began the restoration. Shaw had also purchased another sedan as a donor car, but that one sat outside in the Tampa sun and salt air for many years, so that when Dr. Zeiger went to retrieve it, along with the other car, the frame broke in half and the rear doors fell off. The restoration was a difficult one. His car has only 39k miles, but he did a complete mechanical restoration: drive train, brakes, transmission, and factory air conditioning. When he bought the car, it had Mustang steering gear, the steering arms were brazed together; it was, in his words, “an accident waiting to happen.” The rear windows were screwed shut. The rear doors closed with cables, a flat piece of metal, not a multistrand cable, and he found a supplier near Lockheed who made a similar part for aircraft. As he says, the challenge was getting everything to work and to make it completely authentic. He is, he says, “a nut for authenticity.” Nothing was terminally damaged, but all the wiring was black, not color coded, and all the code tags had fallen off.

Fortunately, every piece of stainless trim, and the bumpers and grilles were perfect. The windshield was perfect; there are no windshields in inventory anywhere. He redid the Robergel wire wheels with stainless spokes and used blackwall tires, a good choice. This is car number 12; the first 10 cars had hemi motors, but the last year for those was 1958. Car 11 and his have the Dodge 361 wedge motor. Only the first 12 cars had the hood scoop.

In the fifties and sixties, France was still recovering from the enormous poverty and destruction engendered by both World Wars. Today, they look back at this period as “Les Trentes Glorieuses,” the thirty glorious years, but the Excellence stood out amongst the other local offerings of the time, even compared to the official car of state, the iconic DS. It was decidedly American, with its wrap around windshield, tailfins, stacked quad headlights, and big American V8, coupled to an automatic transmission (the Torqueflite, arguably the best automatic of the era). It appeared in the 1959 movie, “Count Your Blessings,” with Deborah Kerr and Maurice Chevalier. The Excellence was never the Car of State for France, because DeGaulle insisted on an all-French product, which the DS most assuredly was, and the FACEL was not.

It is not generally known that FACEL entered into discussions with Studebaker-Packard in 1960, as a replacement for the last real Packard, the 1955-6 models. In 1960, Sherwood Egbert was recruited from McCullough to run S-P, and he flirted with the idea of resurrecting Packard. At the time, S-P was the exclusive marketing agent for Mercedes-Benz, who objected to this arrangement, unfortunately, and so there were no further discussions, because S-P needed the cashflow from the Mercedes marketing arrangement. (As an aside, In April of 1956, Packard had similar discussions with Ford about using the ’56 Lincoln body dies with a Packard front and rear clip. HF II, the Deuce, was willing, but his staff vetoed the idea, so in April, 1956, following the recommendations of those “automotive experts” Ernst and Ernst, production was consolidated in South Bend, and there were no more real Packards, unfortunately). However, a few cars were exported to the US; the French Club, the Amicale, has the complete factory records of where the cars were sold originally, and their original specification.

Dr. Zeiger, who lives in Los Angeles, took the car to Monterey in August, after being invited to show it at Pebble Beach. Although originally black, it is now a burgundy color with a silver roof, and is quite striking in person. Fortunately, it went to the right person who was capable of restoring it to its original state. Now I must convince the good doctor to find an HK 500 for his next project!