France vs. Italy: Coachbuilders

Story by Gijsbert Paul-Berk

Once a thriving industry in France, by the mid-1950s, French coachbuilders such as Saoutchik, Figoni et Falaschi and Marcel Pourtout had all but disappeared. Yet in Italy, coachbuilders such as Bertone, Pinin Farina and Touring were succeeding beyond their wildest dreams, becoming known the world over as leaders in automotive design. Why was this so? What factors encouraged the coachbuilding industry in Italy, while virtually destroying it in nearby France? Gijsbert Paul Berk reports.

Structural problems in the French automotive industry

Even before WWII it was clear that the French motorcar industry had problems. The French automakers had lost their leading position in Europe and their total production of passenger cars (199,000) was not only way below that in the US (2,126,000) but also below that of the UK (348,000) and Germany (281,000). The number of cars produced in 1939 was the same as in 1929.

What was the cause of this decline?
1. – There were too many small manufacturers. At the 1938 Paris Motor show, the last to be held before the ‘phony’ war started in September 1939, no less than 32 French makes exhibited. The majority of them had insufficient financial means to invest in new models or modern production methods.
2. – The makers of exclusive premium models such as Bugatti, Delahaye, Delage, Hotchkiss, Panhard, Talbot and Voisin struggled to compete with their British, German and especially American mass produced counterparts such as Cadillac, La Salle or Chrysler.

Taxes on large and powerful engines

This had also to do with their production volume and was the indirect result of the crippling taxation system that punished the French owners of cars with large and powerful engines. (Note that this tax inequality was before the postwar Plan Pons.) Because of this the French home market for luxury automobiles cars had shrunk dramatically. In addition, the competition with the upmarket models of the French mass producers also increased, leading to a quandary; Why spend 68.000 Francs for a 15 CV Talbot Berline, or 82.000 Francs for a Delahaye with a standard coach body by Chapron, if for 36.000 Francs you could buy a 6 cylinder Citroën 15, or for 41.500 Francs you became the proud owner of a Peugeot Eclipse convertible with its disappearing hard top?

The rationalization of the French car production

After its liberation, in 1944, France was confronted with many problems. Much of its infrastructure and a great number of its production facilities were destroyed by fighting, bombing or the theft their machines by the retreating Germans, and there was a shortage of everything.

Paul-Marie Pons was the Directeur Adjoint of the Division des Industries Mécaniques et Électriques (DIME) at the Ministry de la Production Industriëlle. His boss was the Minister Claude Monet, who was an apostle of government economic planning. What the Plan Pons n 1945 tried to achieve was to improve the competitiveness of the French automobile industry by rationalization of their production.

Admittedly the execution of his plan was high-handed and autocratic, favoring the larger French car manufacturers, Berliet, Citroën, Ford France, Panhard, Peugeot, Renault and Simca. Panhard, after much lobbying, was included because they agreed to buy the manufacturing rights of the small AFG car Jean-Albert Gregoire had designed during the war for Aluminium Français. However, Peugeot was forced to collaborate with Hotchkiss, Latil and Saurer for the production of commercial. From the same point of view truckmaker Berliet had to form an association with Isobloc and Rochet-Schneider. And because Louis Renault was suspected of collaboration with the Germans – never proven – Renault became the nationalized Regie Nationale des Usines Renault.

Export or perish

The Plan Pons – perhaps intentionally – completely neglected the interests of the smaller French manufacturers of luxury cars. Their allocation of steel depended on their capacity to export their automobiles. But that was not so easy. Most other European countries had also suffered from the war or the German occupation and their economies did not encourage buying expensive automobiles.

Only Switzerland had escaped from these ordeals, but their market was rather small. Besides the chassis and technical specifications of the majority of the French luxury cars stemmed from before the war. This was also the case with most British postwar cars but the industrial situation in Britain was much better than in France. Most of their car factories had been involved in the war effort and many had modern American machines and equipment. The British had also the advantage of a common language for selling their cars to the prosperous North American market.

The situation in Italy

Before Mussolini joined Hitler Germany in WWII, Italy still had a predominantly agricultural-based economy, with demographics more akin to a developing country (high illiteracy, poverty, rapid population growth and a high proportion of adolescents).

In 1938 the production of passenger cars in Italy (59,000) equaled 30% of that in France. The number of automobiles on the road in Italy before the war was around 374,000, in comparison to 1,817,600 in France.

During the early 1950s, the situation of many Italian coachbuilders was nearly as desperate as that of their French colleagues. But the Italians had some advantages.

Experience with small series of monocoque bodies

Traditionally Alfa Romeo, Lancia and even Fiat had always outsourced the manufacture of the bodies for sporting models and convertibles to the specialized coachbuilders. This included their smaller models such as the Lancia Aprilia and the Fiat 1100 and 1500. Many of the Italian carrozzeria therefore had experience with series production and even monocoque constructions.

In contrast most French carrossiers had lived from dressing high priced and high performance chassis from French or foreign premium makes.

The Italian coachbuilders – especially those in the Turin area – were used to working together. If one of them had had too many orders he would engage one of his colleagues to help out. Claude Pourtout, the son of the French carrossier in Marcel Pourtout in Rueil Malmaison, who was a Vice-président of the Fédération Française de la Carrosserie, once told me that he had tried this with his colleagues in Paris but that it did not work there. He only succeeded to get the wide grille that Philippe Charbonneaux designed for Delahaye, to be used by most of them.

Well-trained labor force

Italy had a large number of skilled craftsmen available on the labor market. During the war years many farmhands were trained as mechanics, welders and panel beaters to work in the aviation industry. This contrary to what had happened in France, where many craftsmen had been forced to work as farmhands or slave laborers in German factories.

Important breakthroughs

There were two important events that also helped the Italia carrozzeria to recover their dynamism.

In 1951 a red Cisitalia 202 coupé created by Pinin Farina, after a prototype by aircraft designer Giovanni Savonuzzi, was chosen by the New York Museum of Modern art as part of an exhibition on automotive design. Because Pinin Farina had a good sense of public relations, the resulting publicity confirmed the Italian leadership of motorcar design.

Another important breakthrough was when Alfa Romeo in 1955 decided that Bertone should build the bodies for the Giulietta Sprint coupé. Later the production of the Giulietta Spider was entrusted to Pinin Farina. Both these small sporting vehicles became ambassadors for Italian styling.

Turin and Milan become the fashion centers of the motor industry

It is hardly surprising that a great number of non-Italian car manufacturers crossed the Alps to engage the services of Bertone, Pininfarina, Ghia, Touring and a few smaller carrozzeria. Some of them also hired Italian designers such as Giovanni Michelotti and Giorgetto Giugiaro to shape their bread and butter automobiles and their sporting machines. The client list for Italian coachwork style comprised: Aston Martin, British Motor Corporation (Austin, MG, Morris, Wolseley and Riley), Bristol, DAF, GM, Peugeot, Triumph and Volkswagen.

Between 1950 -1960, due to devaluation, the value of the Italian lira became very favorable for those paying in US Dollars. For this reason, and the fact that the Italian craftsmen were fast workers, many leading American automakers send chassis over to Turin or Milan to have their concept cars build there.
As success breeds success, the 1950 became the start of a boom for the Italian carrozzeria. It is a great pity that in recent years most of them have completely disappeared or are just struggling to survive. But that is another (hist)story.