French Cyclocars

[Mark McKibbin]

Nothing really to do with Austin Sevens apart from the fact that I was invited to participate in a meeting of our local car & motorcycle club in a village called Bessèges for their annual Chestnust festival. In amongst the attendees were not one but two MOCHET Voiturettes (cyclocars) which I guess must be a pretty rare ocurrence to see two in the same place. They both date from the early 1950s and feature a mid mounted 125cc two stroke engine driving the rear wheels, which are closer together than the fronts. Bit similar to a Bond mini-car but the other way round and even more agricultural:



There was also a very tidy Facel-Vega convertible, also pretty high on the rarity scale (so I'm told):



Not much pre-war stuff on show apart from a Citreoën 11BL Traction , a 1930 Peugeot 201 (unrestored) and a little 4 seater from Angleterre...

Certainly an eclectic mix but I think its not a Facel Vega but a Facelia. Most of these have had an engine transplant.  From Wikipedia:

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 bearings supporting each camshaft, 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. Famed engineers Charles Deutsch and Jean Bertin were called in to solve the issues, but it was not enough and the engine was pronounced a disaster and the Facellia with it.[4]