Delahaye 135
Delahaye were a French manufacturer founded in Tours, about 60 miles south of Le Mans, in 1894. They soon after …
Delahaye Cars
Delahaye Cars
Delahaye cars were originally founded by the pioneering French automotive engineer Émile Delahaye. In 1894, at the age of 54 he displayed his first automobile at a Motor Show in a Paris art gallery along with other motorised machines.
His first cars were produced in his hometown, Tours, about 60 miles south of Le Mans. As with many companies that developed cars he started to race the cars to gain public exposure. He raced a car in the 1896 Paris-Marseille-Paris road race.
Émile was not getting any younger and in failing health, in 1898 he took on two new partners whom had their own finances and facilities, brothers-in-laws, Leon Desmarais and Georges Morane. Soon after they moved production to Paris where the partners had space and machinery they had inherited from family.
Sadly, by 1901, Émile Delahaye had to sell his part of the business and retire to the Riviera where he died in 1905 at the age of 61.
They made some of the earliest automobiles ever, less than 10 years after Benz patented his model no.1. They went on to make some of the most beautiful, most stylish cars, just stunning. They also made utility vehicles such as commercial trucks, fire engines, and army Jeep-like models.They are also noted for the design and development of the V6 engine, 1911.
The Delahaye company was absorbed and vanishing in 1954.