A Lorraine-Dietrich Diesel prototype?

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You may know Lorraine-Dietrich for its elegance, for its technical features (6 cylinder overhead valve engine designed by the renowned engineer Marius Barbarou) and/or for its achievements at 24 Hours Race of Le Mans: first and third places in 1925, first/second/third in 1926.

This car, also known as the 15 cv or Silken Six, usually was fitted with sporting bodies, but some with closed saloon bodies are known as well. The pick-up (plateau-ridelles) presented here can hardly be recognized as a real B3/6. Especially when you have at the naked chassis + engine. Sorry, here not the nicely engineered Barbarou engine but a crude CLM two cylinder diesel engine!

CLM stands for Compagnie Lilloise de Moteurs. This company was founded (or maybe just incorporated) by Peugeot in 1928 to build diesel engines according to the Junkers design. Peugeot has been one of the pioneers of the diesel engine, already testing an ordinary model 156 fitted with a diesel two stroke engine (moteur à huiles lourdes) designed by an engineer called Tartrais in the early 1920s.

It is not clear who has changed this Lorraine-Dietrich into an (experimental) diesel car. Was it the farmer near Lyon who used it for many years in his vineyard? Or was it the CLM company testing its CR2 engine, which has been mainly used in tractors? The latter option is suggested by the fact that the CLM logo is on the doors of the car and on the radiator. But if it was used by CLM, why didn't they choose a Peugeot model for it?

This Lorraine Dietrich is to be sold at Osenat, Paris, November 11. Let's hope that the new owner of this remarkable vehicle will keep it the way it is and will not transform it into what it may have looked like when it was born.

(photos courtesy Osenat, text Fons Alkemade)
 

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