Facel Vega - History

Before World War 2 France bred some of the great classic sports and luxury cars: vehicles made by Bugatti, De!age, Delahaye, Hispano-Suiza and Hotchkiss were spoken of in the same breath as Rolls-Royce and Mercedes-Benz. However, when the debris of war was cleared away in 1945, several of the great names never reappeared, and those that did lasted only a few years before withering away.

There were two main reasons for this: the French economy left few people wealthy enough to buy expensive sports and luxury cars; but mostly it was the French car taxation system which killed off the makers of luxury cars. The government imposed a punitive tax on cars over 15 hp which ranged up to nearly a tenth of the price of a luxury car - and this was not a oncer - but a tax payable each and every year you owned it!

The tax virtually killed off all French cars with engines over 2.8 litres. Although several makers attempted to build special cars with engines below this limit, they were unsuccessful, largely because of the low specific output of most non-racing engines, which meant that few cars could aspire to real high performance or carry a large luxury body.

Jean Daninos

It seemed that France was destined to become a producer of micro economy cars for the masses, but Jean Daninos had other ideas. Daninos was the owner of Facel Metallon, a company which he had formed before the war to carry out general engineering work. The company was involved in making parts for the aircraft industry, building office furniture and a variety of other sub-contract work.

Daninos entered the motor industry when several French manufacturers who required bodies for specialised cars came to Facel for this work to be done. Facel built bodies for the Dyna Panhard, the Simca Sport coupe and the Ford Comete and, in so doing, gained a good deal of expertise both in body building and design, as the company assisted with design work on some of the bodies.

The Simca Plein Ciel

Although Facel continued to build Simca bodies into the 1960s, they lost the Panhard contract when Panhard decided to build their own bodies, and Daninos decided to go into car manufacturing himself. The company had already built special bodies on Bentley chassis and had a great deal of influence on the design of Simcas like the Plein Ciel, so it was not a great step for Facel to take. Their first effort was a four-door saloon which owed a good deal to Simca styling although it used mostly Ford components. However, it was too much like other cars already in production and Daninos decided to go for the luxury market.

The car which was unveiled at the 1954 Paris Motor Show set the motoring world talking; not only was it the first luxury car of any consequence to emerge from France since the war, but it was as good as contemporary foreign cars. Although the body shape was reminiscent of the Simca coupes which Facel were building, the nose treatment was novel. The radiator incorporated a vertical section flanked by two small horizontal grilles, with the lights set into separate housings in the front wings. This Facel trademark was to remain with the marque, albeit in modified form, for the rest of its ten-year life span.