Facel was a
FrenchThe French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
manufacturer of
automobileAn automobile, autocar, motor car or car is a wheeled motor vehicle used for transporting passengers, which also carries its own engine or motor...
s from 1954 to 1964.
The company was named after the original metal stamping company FACEL, and the company's first model, the Vega, named after the
starVega is the brightest star in the constellation Lyra, the fifth brightest star in the night sky and the second brightest star in the northern celestial hemisphere, after Arcturus...
, was introduced at the 1954 Paris Auto Show. The cars were advertised with the slogan
For the Few Who Own the Finest.
Initially successful, the company failed after the debut of its mechanically troubled Facellia model.
Company history
The marque Facel Vega was created in 1954 by
Jean DaninosJean Daninos was a Greek- French constructor of luxury cars Facel Vega.The brother of the Pierre Daninos, Jean Daninos had founded the company FACEL in 1939 with hopes of one day designing and manufacturing his own...
(brother of the humorist
Pierre DaninosPierre Daninos was a French writer and humorist.Daninos wrote Les carnets du Major Thompson, which was published in 1954, and was followed by many sequels. The books in the series pretended to be the observations of a retired British officer living in France, and were witty collections of...
, who wrote
Les Carnets du Major Thomson), although the Facel company had been established by the Bonzavia Company in 1939 as a subcontracting company for the aviations industry. FACEL (Forges et Ateliers de Construction d'Eure-et-Loir,
in English: forge and construction workshop of the department of Eure-et-LoirEure-et-Loir is a French department, named after the Eure and Loir rivers.-History:Eure-et-Loir is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790 pursuant to the Act of December 22, 1789...
) was initially a metal-stamping company but decided to expand into car manufacturing in the early 1950s. Facel entered the automobile business as a supplier of special bodies for
PanhardPanhard is currently a French manufacturer of light tactical and military vehicles. Its current incarnation was formed by the acquisition of Panhard by Auverland in 2005. Panhard had been under Citroën ownership, then PSA , for 40 years...
,
DelahayeDelahaye automobile manufacturing company was started by Emile Delahaye in 1894, in Tours, France. His first cars were belt-driven, with single- or twin-cylinder engines. In 1900, Delahaye left the company.-History:...
and
SimcaSimca was a French automaker, founded in November 1934 by Fiat. It was directed from July 1935 to May 1963 by the Italian Henri Théodore Pigozzi...
.
Small numbers of other special bodied cars such as the Bentley pictured were also made, and Facel made the pillarless coupé bodywork for the
Simca/Ford ComèteThe Ford Comète was a car built between 1951 and 1954 in France by the Ford Motor Company's French subsidiary, Ford SAF. Intended as the luxury model in the range, the Comète's bodywork was built by FACEL, who later produced the better-known Facel Vega luxury cars under their own name...
. Around 45,000 Comètes were built, this lucrative contract enabling Facel to market a car of their own.
Facel Vega
The Vega production cars (
Facel FVThe Facel Vega FV/FVS was a car produced by French car maker Facel Vega from 1954 to 1959. It continued until 1962 as the HK500.-FV:The Facel 'Vega' was launched at the 1954 Paris Salon. By 1956 the cars were called FVS , earlier cars often being referred to as simply "FV"...
, later and more famously the HK500) appeared in 1954 using Chrysler V8 engines, at first a 4.5 litres (274 cu in)
DeSotoThe DeSoto was a brand of automobile based in the United States, manufactured and marketed by the Chrysler Corporation from 1928 to 1961. The DeSoto logo featured a stylized image of Hernando de Soto...
HemiThe Chrysler Hemi engine, known by the trademark Hemi, is a series of V8 engines built by Chrysler with a hemispherical combustion chamber. Three different types of Hemi engines have been built by Chrysler for automobiles: the first from 1951–1958, the second from 1964–1971, and the third...
engineThe internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...
; the overall engineering was straightforward, with a tubular chassis,
double wishbone suspensionIn automobiles, a double wishbone suspension is an independent suspension design using two wishbone-shaped arms to locate the wheel. Each wishbone or arm has two mounting points to the chassis and one joint at the knuckle. The shock absorber and coil spring mount to the wishbones to control...
at the front and a solid driven
axleAn axle is a central shaft for a rotating wheel or gear. On wheeled vehicles, the axle may be fixed to the wheels, rotating with them, or fixed to its surroundings, with the wheels rotating around the axle. In the former case, bearings or bushings are provided at the mounting points where the axle...
at the back, as in standard American practice. They were also as heavy as American cars, at about 1800 kg (3,968 lb). Performance was brisk, with an approx 190 kilometre per hour top speed and 0 to 100 kilometre per hour in just under ten seconds.
Most cars were 2-door
hardtopA hardtop is a term for a rigid, rather than canvas, automobile roof. It has been used in several contexts: detachable hardtops, retractable hardtop roofs, and the so-called pillarless hardtop body style....
s with no centre pillar, but a few
convertibleA convertible is a type of automobile in which the roof can retract and fold away having windows which wind-down inside the doors, converting it from an enclosed to an open-air vehicle...
s were built.
The 1956 model was improved with a bigger 5.4 litres (329 cu in) Chrysler engine and updated transmission and other mechanicals. In the same year production began of a four-door model, the
Excellence, with rear-hinged doors (
suicide doorA suicide door is a car door hinged on the trailing edge, the edge closer to the rear of the vehicle. Such doors are rarely used on vehicles in modern times because of their disadvantages....
s) at the back and no centre pillar. The pillarless
designDesign as a noun informally refers to a plan or convention for the construction of an object or a system while “to design” refers to making this plan...
unfortunately made it less rigid and the handling was thus poorer than that of the two-door cars, and surviving examples are rare.
1959 models had even bigger engines, a 5.8 litres (354 cu in) and later a 383 cubic inches (6 l) Chrysler V8, and were quite a bit faster despite their extra weight. The final evolution of the V8 models came in 1962 with the
Facel IIThe Facel Vega 'Facel II was a French Grand Touring car produced by Facel between the years 1962 and 1964.By 1962 the Paris-based Facel Vega company was facing bankruptcy. The Facel II was to be the company's last attempt to create a luxury GT car in the French tradition.The Facel ll was very...
, which was lighter, with sleeker, more modern lines, substantially faster still, and famously
elegant.
Facellia
In 1960, Facel entered the
sports carA sports car is a small, usually two seat, two door automobile designed for high speed driving and maneuverability....
market with the Facellia, a small car similar in size to the then popular Mercedes 190SL. Facellias were advertised in three body styles: cabriolet, 2+2 coupé and 4-seat coupé — all with the same mechanicals and a 2450 mm (96.5 in) wheelbase. Styling was similar to the Facel HK500, but with rather elegant (though fingernail-breaking) flush door handles. Following Facel Vega's demise several of M Daninos's styling cues were "borrowed" by Mercedes-Benz. Prices were roughly
US$The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
4,000 for the Facellia, US$5,500 for the Facel III and US$6,000 for the Facel 6.
With the idea of creating a mass produced all-French sports car competing with the
Alfa RomeoAlfa Romeo Automobiles S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of cars. Founded as A.L.F.A. on June 24, 1910, in Milan, the company has been involved in car racing since 1911, and has a reputation for building expensive sports cars...
s, Facel now moved away from American engines. The Facellia had a 4 cylinder 1.6 L DOHC engine built in France by Paul Cavallier of the Pont-à-Mousson company (which already provided manual gear boxes for the company's larger models). The engine had only two
bearingA bearing is a device to allow constrained relative motion between two or more parts, typically rotation or linear movement. Bearings may be classified broadly according to the motions they allow and according to their principle of operation as well as by the directions of applied loads they can...
s supporting each
camshaftA camshaft is a shaft to which a cam is fastened or of which a cam forms an integral part.-History:An early cam was built into Hellenistic water-driven automata from the 3rd century BC. The camshaft was later described in Iraq by Al-Jazari in 1206. He employed it as part of his automata,...
, using special steels, as opposed to the usual four or five. Despite the metallurgical experience of Pont-à-Mousson, this resulted in excessive flex, timing problems and frequent failures. The engine was pronounced a disaster and the Facellia with it. Company president, Jean Daninos, having been obliged to resign in August 1961 in response to the company's financial problems, the new boss, a former oil company executive called André Belin, gave strict instructions to the after-sales department to respond to customer complaints about broken Facellia engines by replacing the units free of charge without creating "difficulties". The strategy was intended to restore confidence among the company's customer base. It would certainly have created a large hole in the income statement under the"warranty costs" heading, but it may have been too late for customer confidence.
The troublesome engine was replaced with a
Volvo P1800-History:The project was started in 1957 because Volvo wanted a sports car, despite the fact that their previous attempt, the P1900, had been a disaster, with only 68 cars sold. The man behind the project was an engineering consultant to Volvo, Helmer Petterson, who in the 1940s was responsible for...
powerplant in the Facel III, but the damage was done. Production was stopped in 1963 and despite the vision of it being a "volume" car only 1100 were produced, which is Facel's highest production number. Facel lost money on every car they built, the luxury car side of the company being supported entirely by the other work done by Facel Metallon, Jean Daninos's obsession being very similar to that of
David BrownSir David Brown was an English entrepreneur, managing director of his family firm David Brown Limited and one time owner of shipbuilders Vosper Thornycroft and automobile manufacturer Aston Martin....
of
Aston MartinAston Martin Lagonda Limited is a British manufacturer of luxury sports cars, based in Gaydon, Warwickshire. The company name is derived from the name of one of the company's founders, Lionel Martin, and from the Aston Hill speed hillclimb near Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire...
.
The small Facellia met with little success and the losses from this, due to strong competition at the luxury end of the market, killed off the company. Facel left the car market completely in 1964. What was, according to some, the best small Facel, the Facel 6, which used an Austin Healey 2.8 litre engine, came too late to save the company, fewer than 30 having been produced when the French government scuttled the endeavour.
Prominence
Prominent owners of Facel Vegas included
Pablo PicassoPablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
,
Ava GardnerAva Lavinia Gardner was an American actress.She was signed to a contract by MGM Studios in 1941 and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers . She became one of Hollywood's leading actresses, considered one of the most beautiful women of her day...
,
Ringo StarrRichard Starkey, MBE better known by his stage name Ringo Starr, is an English musician and actor who gained worldwide fame as the drummer for The Beatles. When the band formed in 1960, Starr was a member of another Liverpool band, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He became The Beatles' drummer in...
,
Joan FontaineJoan de Beauvoir de Havilland , known professionally as Joan Fontaine, is a British American actress. She and her elder sister Olivia de Havilland are two of the last surviving leading ladies from Hollywood of the 1930s....
,
Stirling MossSir Stirling Craufurd Moss, OBE FIE is a former racing driver from England...
,
Tony CurtisTony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...
,
Dean MartinDean Martin was an American singer, film actor, television star and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", "Volare" and "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?"...
,
Fred AstaireFred Astaire was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute...
,
Maurice TrintignantMaurice Bienvenu Jean Paul Trintignant was a motor racing driver and vintner from France. He competed in the Formula One World Championship for fourteen years, between 1950 and 1964, one of the longest careers in the early years of F1...
and several Saudi princes.
http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070302/FREE/70223002/1027/FREE Race-car driver
Stirling MossSir Stirling Craufurd Moss, OBE FIE is a former racing driver from England...
would drive his HK500 from event to event rather than fly.
The French writer
Albert CamusAlbert Camus was a French author, journalist, and key philosopher of the 20th century. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.Camus was awarded the 1957...
died in a Facel Vega FV3B driven by his publisher, Michel Gallimard At the time of his death, Camus had planned to travel by train, with his wife and children, but at the last minute accepted his publisher's proposal to travel with him.
A Facel Vega appears in computer-animated form in the film
RatatouilleRatatouille is a 2007 American computer-animated comedy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures. It is the eighth film produced by Pixar, and was directed by Brad Bird, who took over from Jan Pinkava in 2005...
(
PixarPixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
, 2007), driven by one of the main characters.
Models
- Vega FV
- Facel Vega FVS
The Facel Vega FV/FVS was a car produced by French car maker Facel Vega from 1954 to 1959. It continued until 1962 as the HK500.-FV:The Facel 'Vega' was launched at the 1954 Paris Salon. By 1956 the cars were called FVS , earlier cars often being referred to as simply "FV"...
- Facel Vega HK500
- Facel Vega II
The Facel Vega 'Facel II was a French Grand Touring car produced by Facel between the years 1962 and 1964.By 1962 the Paris-based Facel Vega company was facing bankruptcy. The Facel II was to be the company's last attempt to create a luxury GT car in the French tradition.The Facel ll was very...
- Facel Vega Excellence
The Excellence was a luxury saloon unveiled by Facel-Vega of Paris, France at the Paris Auto Show in October 1956 to rave reviews by the motoring press....
- Facellia
- Facel III
- Facel 6
External links