Hotchkiss automobiles & trucks made between 1903 and 1955 in Paris France

Hotchkiss logo on GS car.

Hubert and Mme Le Blon at the 1906 Targa Florio driving a Hotchkiss 35 hp

1931 Hotchkiss Sports

Hotchkiss 686 produced from 1936 to 1952

1953 Hotchkiss Grégoire

Hotchkiss were lux­ury cars made be­tween 1903 and 1955 by the French com­pany Hotchkiss et Cie in Saint-De­nis, Paris. The badge for the mar­que showed a pair of crossed can­nons, evok­ing the com­pany’s his­tory as an arms man­u­fac­turer.

The com­pany’s first entry into car mak­ing came from or­ders for en­gine com­po­nents such as crank­shafts which were sup­plied to Pan­hard et Lev­as­sor, De Dion-Bou­ton and other pi­o­neer­ing com­pa­nies and in 1903 they went on to make com­plete en­gines. En­cour­aged by two major car dis­trib­u­tors, Mann & Over­ton of Lon­don and Fournier of Paris, Hotchkiss de­cided to start mak­ing their own range of cars and pur­chased a Mer­cedes Sim­plex for in­spi­ra­tion and Georges Terasse, pre­vi­ously of Mors, was taken on as de­signer.

Early cars

The first Hotchkiss car, a 17 CV four-cylin­der model, ap­peared in 1903. The en­gine of the 20 CV type C was heav­ily based on the Mer­cedes Sim­plex ex­cept that wher­ever pos­si­ble it used ball bear­ings rather than plain ones (in­clud­ing the crank­shaft) and ex­cept the Hotchkiss drive. Six-cylin­der mod­els, the types L and O fol­lowed in 1907.

The ball bear­ing en­gines lasted until the 30CV type X of 1910. In that same year Hotchkiss moved into a smaller car mar­ket with the 2212cc type Z.

With the out­break of World War I, the fac­tory turned to war pro­duc­tion and a sub­sidiary plant was opened in Coven­try, Eng­land. Car pro­duc­tion re­sumed in France 1919 with the pre war types AD, AD6, AF and AG. Dur­ing World War I, they pro­duced ma­chine guns and tested them from the fac­tory roof.

Inter war production

After an at­tempt to enter the lux­ury mar­ket with the AK, which did not get be­yond the pro­to­type stage, the com­pany de­cided on a one model pol­icy and in­tro­duced the Coven­try de­signed AM in 1923. Later that year the Coven­try plant was sold to Mor­ris. Henry Mann Ainsworth (1884–1971) and Al­fred Her­bert Wilde (1889 – 1930) who had run it, moved to Paris to be­come gen­eral man­ager and chief en­gi­neer of the car di­vi­sion re­spec­tively.

In 1926 con­struc­tion of the new fac­tory in the Boule­vard Or­nano was com­pleted and in 1929 Hotchkiss got hold of a steel press al­low­ing in-house man­u­fac­ture of steel bod­ies. The one model pol­icy lasted until 1929 when the six-cylin­der AM73 and AM80 mod­els were an­nounced. “73” and “80” stood for the bore of the en­gines used, a nam­ing theme picked up again later in 1936 after a brief hia­tus.

Al­though most cars had bod­ies that were fac­tory built, Hotchkiss still was a lux­ury car brand, and so coach­builder Veth and Sons built a small num­ber of bod­ies for the AM80.

The AM mod­els were re­placed by a new range in 1933 with a new nam­ing sys­tem. The 411 was an 11CV model with four-cylin­der en­gine, the 413 a 13CV four and the 615, 617 and 620 were sim­i­lar six-cylin­der types. The 1936 686, which re­placed the 620, was avail­able as the high-per­for­mance Grand Sport and 1937 Paris-Nice with twin car­bu­ret­tors and these al­lowed Hotchkiss to win the Monte Carlo Rally in 1932, 1933, 1934, 1939, 1949 and 1950. The new nam­ing scheme in­tro­duced in 1936 con­sisted of the num­ber of cylin­ders, fol­lowed by the bore of the en­gine (in mil­lime­tres).

Second World War

The ar­ma­ment side of the com­pany and the body stamp­ing plant were na­tion­alised in 1936 by the Front Pop­u­laire gov­ern­ment. The car com­pany in 1937 took over Amil­car. With re-ar­ma­ment speed­ing up they also started mak­ing mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles and light tanks. When France de­clared war, in Sep­tem­ber 1939, Hotchkiss were sit­ting on an army order for 1,900 H35 and H39 tanks pow­ered by six-cylin­der mo­tors of re­spec­tively 3.5 and 6 litres ca­pac­ity, and at the time of the Ger­man in­va­sion in May 1940 they were still work­ing through the order. How­ever, as the mil­i­tary sit­u­a­tion de­te­ri­o­rated the de­ci­sion was taken, on 20 May 1940, to aban­don the Saint-De­nis plant which by now was fully con­cen­trated on war production. There was a dis­or­derly evac­u­a­tion, ini­tially to­wards Aux­erre and then Moulins and then fur­ther to­wards the south, as em­ploy­ees des­per­ately tried to keep in­for­ma­tion on the mil­i­tary pro­duc­tion out of the hands of the Germans. How­ever, the na­tional ca­pit­u­la­tion im­plicit in the sign­ing of the armistice on 22 June left these ef­forts look­ing some­what ir­rel­e­vant, and most of the em­ploy­ees drifted back in the en­su­ing weeks. Two ex­cep­tions were the Com­mer­cial Di­rec­tor, Jacques Ja­cob­sen and the Eng­lish born Gen­eral Di­rec­tor, Henry Ainsworth, both of whom man­aged to avoid cap­ture and to leave France. Dur­ing the war, like many busi­nesses in the oc­cu­pied (north­ern) zone, the com­pany was obliged to work for the oc­cu­piers and was en­gaged in the re­pair of mil­i­tary vehicles.

In 1941 François Lehideux, then a lead­ing mem­ber of the gov­ern­ment’s eco­nomic team, called Jean-Pierre Peu­geot and his Gen­eral Di­rec­tor Mau­rice Jor­dan to a meet­ing, and in­vited them to study the pos­si­bil­ity of tak­ing a con­trol­ling share in the Hotchkiss business. The sug­ges­tion from Lehideux de­rived from a Ger­man law dated 18 Oc­to­ber 1940 au­tho­ris­ing the con­fis­ca­tion of busi­nesses con­trolled by Jews. The Peu­geot busi­ness it­self had been op­er­at­ing, grudg­ingly, under over­all Ger­man con­trol since the sum­mer of 1940. In any event, in July 1942 Peu­geot took a con­trol­ling share in the Hotchkiss busi­ness and to­wards the end of 1942 the names of Peu­geot and Jor­dan were listed as mem­bers of the Hotchkiss board. There is no ev­i­dence of any at­tempt to com­bine the op­er­a­tions of the two busi­nesses, how­ever: after the war Peu­geot would in due course re­lin­quish their hold­ing in Hotchkiss.

With lib­er­a­tion in 1944, Ainsworth re­turned and pro­duc­tion restarted in 1946 with the pre-war cars, a light truck and a trac­tor.

Post war models

1955 Hotchkiss Anjou

Hotchkiss-Grégoire

After the war, car pro­duc­tion re­sumed only slowly with fewer than 100 cars pro­duced in each of 1946 and 1947, but by 1948 things were mov­ing a lit­tle more rapidly with 460 Hotchkiss cars pro­duced that year. This vol­ume of out­put was wholly in­suf­fi­cient to carry the com­pany, al­though truck pro­duc­tion was a lit­tle more suc­cess­ful with more than 2,300 pro­duced in 1948, and it was sup­port from the truck vol­umes and from

the Jeep based M201 that en­abled the com­pany to stag­ger on as a car pro­ducer slightly more con­vinc­ingly than some of France’s other lux­ury car mak­ers, at least until the mid-1950s. The cars that rep­re­sented the busi­ness in the sec­ond half of the 1940s were es­sen­tially the com­pany’s pre­war de­signs. The 2,312 cc four-cylin­der car was now branded as the Hotchkiss 864 while the six-cylin­der car was badged as the Hotchkiss 680 with a 3,016 cc en­gine or as the Hotchkiss 686 with the 3,485 cc engine.

The lux­ury au­to­mo­bile range was mod­ernised in 1950 and a new car, the four-door sa­loon Anjou, was avail­able on the 1350 (re­named from the 486) and 2050 (686) chas­sis. The high-end Anthéor cabri­o­let was added in 1952. Some Anthéor mod­els were coach­built by Swiss coach­builder Worblaufen.

In 1948 Hotchkiss had bought the rights to the Grégoire front-wheel-drive car and this car en­tered pro­duc­tion in 1951 but was ex­pen­sive. Sales in gen­eral were falling, and on reach­ing his 65th birth­day in 1949 Ainsworth re­tired, to be suc­ceeded in the top job by Mau­rice de Gary. The Peu­geot fam­ily sold their in­ter­est in the com­pany. Coupé and cabri­o­let ver­sions of the Hotchkiss-Grégoire were an­nounced in 1951, but sales did not im­prove, and pro­duc­tion stopped in 1952 after only 247 were made.

Hotchkiss had made 2.700 cars in 1951. The Grégoire de­sign had in­te­gral con­struc­tion, in­de­pen­dent sus­pen­sion all round, a 2.2 Litre flat-four en­gine and front wheel drive. Claimed top speed was 95 mph. Buy­ers did not wel­come its smooth shape. End­less teething trou­bles brought pro­duc­tion to a com­plete stand­still in 1952. Hotchkiss pro­duced 230 cars of all their mod­els in 1953. When the fac­tory fi­nally closed there had been just 250 Hotchkiss-Grégoires built. In 1955 Cit­roen in­tro­duced the DS19 and Peu­geot its 403. Aside from the Grégoire de­sign Hotchkiss could only offer pre-war de­signs. Ex­port sales were lim­ited by the fail­ure to pro­vide left-hand-drive cars.

Merger and closure

Hotchkiss merged with De­la­haye, an­other French lux­ury car brand, in 1954 to be­come Société Hotchkiss-De­la­haye, but car pro­duc­tion stopped in 1955 to be re­placed by li­cence built Jeeps. In 1956 the com­pany was taken over by Brandt, a house­hold ap­pli­ance maker, to be­come Hotchkiss-Brandt, who were again taken over in 1966 by Thom­son-Hous­ton. Mil­i­tary ve­hi­cles were made until 1967 and trucks until 1971.

Pictures from my own collection:

See also

• Delahaye
• Delage
• Talbot-Lago

References

1. ^ “Index entry”. FreeBMD. ONS. Retrieved 28 May 2012.
2. ^ http://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Alfred_Herbert_Wilde
3. ^ ^abcdefghi “Automobilia”. Toutes les voitures françaises 1940 – 46 (les années sans salon). Paris: Histoire & collections. Nr. 26: Page 41. 2003.
4. ^ ^abc “Automobilia”. Toutes les voitures françaises 1948 (salon Paris oct 1947). Paris: Histoire & collections. Nr. 7: Page 48. 1998.
5. ^ ^ab “Automobilia”. Toutes les voitures françaises 1952 (salon Paris Oct 1951). Paris: Histoire & collections. Nr. 20: Page 40. 2001.
6. ^ Lago America, page 168, Motor Sport magazine, February 1985

External links

Hotchkiss automobiles.