The very first Cyclecar?

• 

What is the ideal motorized vehicle to carry two persons, comfortably and at low cost? This was the question which the French engineer Norbert Galliot had asked himself around 1907. In a contribution to the automotive journal Omnia of 1908 he came up with the answer: a tandem twoseater with an air-cooled three-cylinder engine and single-chain drive.

Around 1907 several car builders were offering voiturettes which had to appeal to those who couldn't afford the larger models (and a chauffeur). But, Galliot remarked, these smaller cars are only “reduced copies” of the larger ones and thus have the same technical complexity (especially with regard to the transmission) and thus are still too expensive to buy and to maintain. The popular vehicle he was looking for had to be different from anything already existing; it had to be some mixture of a car, a motorcycle and a tricar.

A picture in Galliot's paper shows that at least one car had been built according to his ideas, but it shows a radiator so the engine of this prototype was water-cooled. Its weight was about 270 kilograms and it had a planetary gear. According to the Dutch journal De Auto experiment with a 8 cv model had been so succesful that a “well-known company” had bought the patents and intended to build a series of these vehicles.

I have not been able to find the name of this company and I have also never found a vehicle which resembled the Galliot. Nevertheless, I think we should praise Galliot's attempt to 'reinvent' the car and maybe he can even be called a pioneer of the cyclecar, which would appear only about two years later.

(Photo courtesy NCAD, text Fons Alkemade)
 

Plaats een reactie, stel een vraag, geef uw mening, deel aanvullende informatie of start een discussie door de onderstaande velden in te vullen