THE COOLEST CATS OF THE ’50S DROVE THIS EXTINCT CHRYSLER-POWERED CAR

Between 1954 and 1964, France’s Facel Vega produced hugely expensive and exclusive hand-made grand tourers that were usually powered by Chrysler V-8s. The man behind the company was Jean Daninos, who in 1939 founded Forges et Ateliers de Construction d’Eure et de Loir (FACEL), to produce machine tools for the aircraft industry.

Daninos began his career in the 1930s, working alongside André Citroën, whom he helped to design and engineer the Traction Avant. Throughout the Second World War, Facel thrived. Once the hostilities were over, Daninos built a special body on a Bentley Mk VI chassis for himself. Then, he built another half a dozen for his friends. It was this activity that attracted the attention of marques such as Simca and Ford, who awarded Daninos contracts to build the body shells for their low-volume coupes.

More importantly, Panhard also signed a deal with Daninos for Facel to build bodies for its Dyna four-door. This contract alone was big enough to account for 70 percent of Facel’s production capacity, but when Panhard took the work in-house in 1953, Facel suddenly had a lot of production capacity and no use for it.

Daninos had a weakness for stylish luxury cars. Apart from Talbot Lago, a company which would be dead by 1959, there were no other luxury car makers in France. (Delage and Delahaye had already gone to the wall.) Daninos knew that this was his chance to become a luxury car maker, so in 1953 he created Facel Vega. Its goal was to build expensive and exclusive cars for the ultra-wealthy. Among the company’s clients were the Shah of Iran and King Hassan II of Morocco, Ava Gardner, Ringo Starr, Pablo Picasso, Christian Dior, Frank Sinatra, and Stirling Moss.

By 1954 Facel Vega was ready to unveil its first production car, a V-8-powered, four-seat coupe called the FV, which featured a De Soto Firedome 4.5-liter V-8 engine and was underpinned by a bespoke tubular and channel-section steel chassis. The power was taken to the rear wheels via a Chrysler Torqueflite push-button three-speed automatic transmission, or a Pont-à-Mousson four-speed manual. The suspension was conventional, by double wishbones and coil springs up front, with a live Salisbury axle at the back, located by leaf springs. There was cam-and-roller steering, the brakes were drums all round, and bolt-on wire wheels were standard.

Styled by Facel’s in-house designer Jacques Brasseur, the FVS was nothing short of sensational. Glamorous and opulent, it could top 135 mph while keeping its occupants in luxury equal to that of any Rolls-Royce or Cadillac. There was brightwork galore, but it wasn’t gaudy. More impressively, virtually all of it was stainless steel rather than chrome-plated steel—everything was built to last.

The FV would be developed into the FVS and then the HK500. The latter would become Facel Vega’s most popular model, but in the meantime Daninos wanted to build something even more ostentatious. To that end, he stretched the FV’s chassis by 20 inches, lengthening the new four-door sedan by a whole 25 inches. At 15 feet long, the FV was not a small car to begin with, either.

Unveiled at the 1956 Paris Salon, the Excellence was unlike anything seen before or since. Its pillarless construction and rear-hinged back doors were bonkers. Unfortunately, they led to no end of engineering problems, as the doors had a tendency to fly open when the car rounded a corner. Facel Vega’s solution, when it returned to the 1957 Paris Salon with the same prototype, was a 5.8-liter Chrysler Hemi V-8.

It wasn’t until spring 1958 that the first 10 Excellences were ready for delivery, each with a 6.3-liter Chrysler V-8 in its nose. Over the next three years, the company produced another 134 cars. But in 1962 Facel Vega went into receivership, although it would limp on for another two years, producing cars at a trickle. Among them were another eight Excellences, taking the total production run up to 152.

When Jean Daninos had started to create Facel Vega, he assumed that France would take very few of his cars because of punitive tax laws. In the end, almost a third of the Excellences made (48) were sold in the home market. North America took 63 and the UK 13, with most of the others going to various Arab states and an array of Western European countries. The number of survivors is now unknown, but three are in the Isle of Man Motor Museum, so if you’re now desperate to see one of these astonishing vehicles, you know where to go.

 

***

 

Check out the Hagerty Media homepage so you don’t miss a single story, or better yet, bookmark it. To get our best stories delivered right to your inbox, subscribe to our newsletters.

Via Hagerty UK

The post The coolest cats of the ’50s drove this extinct Chrysler-powered car appeared first on Hagerty Media.

Looking to purchase a car? Find your match on the MSN Autos Marketplace

2023-06-06T18:13:07Z dg43tfdfdgfd