The steering wheel is on the right, the shift
lever is on the left and the throttle and brake
pedals are the opposite of where I might expect
them to be, so I'm hoping that the owner, Scott
Barton, has some good advice on controlling this
petite French thoroughbred. Even as I'm
wondering how I'll ever get behind the wheel,
Scott offers his first suggestion: "You'd better
take your shoes off. There's not enough room to
work the pedals with your shoes on, and you
can't take them off once you're in."
How right he is, I discover as I maneuver my
way into the driver's seat of this Amilcar CGSs,
stepping in from the passenger's side--the big
steering wheel and lack of a door hinder entry
on the driver's side. It's tight, all right,
with a body that already seems too narrow at my
shoulders, and tapers in until it reaches the
tall, skinny radiator that lies just ahead.
Scott, who's climbed into the passenger seat,
sits a few inches further back than I do, and
the flared cowl offers him at least some
protection from the wind. The asymmetrical
cockpit opening is cut away on my side, and I
feel as if I'm hanging halfway out of the car as
I grip the big, four-spoke steering wheel and
look out past the folding Brooklands racing
screen.
We get started. Switch on the battery, pull
out the choke, retard the spark by turning the
big lever on the dashboard to the left, turn on
the gas and press the starter button on the
right of the polished alloy dashboard, and the
long-stroke four comes to life, emitting a bark
out of proportion to its diminutive, 1,100cc
size. Clutch left, brake right, and gas in the
middle, I silently repeat, reminding myself not
to mix up those last two as I shift the
three-speed into first--up and to the left, but
with the wrong hand--and let the clutch out with
my stockinged foot. A bit of gas, a nice smooth
engagement of the three-plate wet clutch, and
we're off. I don't think to go looking for the
tachometer or the speedometer--this is not what
you would call an ergonomically friendly
dashboard--but the wind blowing around my head,
the growl of the engine and the sight of
pavement rushing past down by my elbow suggest
rapid progress, no matter what our true speed
is.
Scott apparently disagrees. "Go ahead, give
it more gas!" he hollers, smiling, and I do. The
Amilcar surges ahead, making me wonder about the
engine's 35hp rating, and before I know it our
long straight has given way to a sharp left-hand
curve. There's a little sand on the pavement
left over from the winter, and it's here that
the rear axle proves just what the
specifications sheet says: This car has no
differential. The back end hops sideways once,
twice, three times as the skinny tires break
loose on the sand, arguing over which of them
will be the driving wheel. It's not
white-knuckle time, but it's a sensation I'd
never experienced before. The steering is
pinpoint sharp, and the four-wheel drum brakes
provide a nice, straight stop, I'm happy to
discover.
"It gives you a sensation that you're going a
lot faster than you really are," said Scott, a
Northampton, Massachusetts, collector who fell
in love with Amilcars when he saw one on display
at a concours a decade or so ago. "Cruising is
probably about 40 to 45 miles an hour. There's a
certain resonance that you hit above that, and
you basically have to will yourself to go beyond
that if you want to go faster. Just above the
point at which you think it's going to explode
on you, it smoothes out right around 50 or so,"
he said. "With the current configuration of
carburetion, tires and wheels, I probably top
out at about 50 to 55. That's the fastest that
I've gone in this."
There were at least 30 other cyclecar
manufacturers in business in France in the years
after World War I, but none can match the cachet
of the sporting Amilcar. Their style,
construction and performance have made them
legendary; their successful racing history then,
as today, prompted comparisons with Bugatti. As
the magazine Moto-Revue observed in October
1924, "The Amilcar voiturette is the dream
machine of anyone who loves fast, responsive
cars." It maintains its passionate cult
following today, more than eight decades later,
and the CGSs represents the factory's ultimate
performance production car. Only 984 were built
in the model's 2½ year run, lovingly assembled
at the rate of one or two a day.
The Amilcar may owe its greatness to a number
of talented designers and engineers, but credit
for the inspiration belongs to the French
government. Eager to revive its automobile
industry after World War I, France knocked down
financial barriers to car ownership by lowering
the taxes on cyclecars to just 100 francs a
year. A cyclecar, under the government's
definition, could have three or four wheels, no
more than two seats, a curb weight of no more
than 350 kilograms (770 pounds) without trim and
a displacement of no more than 1,100cc. Anything
over those limits would fall into the voiturette
category, taxed at nearly triple the rate.
An engineer named Edmond Moyet had an idea
for building such a car, but he had two
significant problems: He didn't have the money,
and he was already working with designer Jules
Salomon on Citroën's Type A. Fortunately for
Moyet, he met André Morel, who was both a sales
agent for a cyclecar called the Le Zèbre and a
would-be race car driver. Morel was impressed by
Moyet's ideas, and introduced him to two people
who could help him achieve his dream: financier
Emile Akar, the manager of a successful chain of
grocery shops, and Joseph Lamy, a businessman
who at the time was an executive with the
company that built the Le Zèbre.
With Akar's 100,000 franc investment, Moyet
was able to build three examples of his new
light car for display at the Paris Salon of
October 1921. It used a four-cylinder,
side-valve engine which, no surprise, was
similar to the one Salomon had designed for
Citroën. The engine was built as a unit with the
three-speed gearbox--again, like Citroën--and
drove the solid rear axle directly, the car's
narrow track and skinny tires thought to make a
differential unnecessary. A pressed-steel frame
ended at the mounts for the quarter-elliptic
rear springs. Prospective dealers who saw the
prototypes invested 1 million francs in the
project--worth about $11 million in today's
dollars--and Akar and Lamy raised another 2
million. They founded the Societe Nouvelle pour
l'Automobile, and agreed to a friend's
suggestion that they name the new car "Amilcar,"
a sort-of anagram of Akar and Lamy.
France was hungry for cyclecars, and the new
Amilcar CC was a strong seller, even at 9,200
francs, or 1,200 francs more than an equivalent
Citroën. (At the 1921 exchange rate of 5.75
cents per franc, that works out to about $530.)
By July of 1921, five CCs were rolling off the
assembly line every day, as buyers discovered
how sturdy, steady, comfortable, economical and
reliable these little cars were. Enthusiasts
praised the car's combination of high top speed
and excellent gas mileage.
Morel, who had come on board with Lamy and
Akar, still nurtured his own dream of racing
glory. Without his bosses' knowledge, and with
the help of kindred spirit Marcel Sée, who had
just been hired as deputy manager of the works,
he entered an Amilcar in a flying kilometer
speed trial at Lyon in 1921, and took a class
victory with an average speed of 56.25 mph.
After another victory in a local hillclimb
several weeks later resulted in a spike in
orders, Lamy and Akar gave Morel their blessing
to set up a racing department. They could not
have known it, but they had just bestowed
immortality on their little car.
A sports model, called the CS (Cyclecar
Sport), soon emerged, with a larger, 1,004cc
engine rated at 23hp. Its weight bumped the
model up into the voiturette class, but it
mattered little, thanks to a change in French
tax rates. Morel drove a CS to victory in the
debut of a 24-hour race just outside Paris
called the Bol d'Or, or Golden Bowl, averaging
37 mph, a class record for the time. At the 1922
Grand Prix de Cyclecars at Le Mans, a 247-mile
contest, an instant rivalry was sparked when
Amilcars finished third and fourth behind a pair
of Salmsons. Still, Morel and Amilcar were
crowned 1922 Champion of France in the 1,100cc
class. At the first 24 Hours of Le Mans, in
1923, Amilcar finished 18th, beaten again in its
class by Salmson. But the company would take 47
checkered flags that year, most in regional
races that helped build the marque's reputation.
The CS was further refined as the CGS, or
Cyclecar Grand Sport, through the work of Moyet
and two accomplished engineers who had joined
him from Citroën, Maurice Dubois and Emmanuel
Cohen. For the CGS, the engine was bored out to
1,075cc, and refined with an improved combustion
chamber and full pressure lubrication, rather
than the splash lubrication that had proved to
be marginal in competition. (One test driver
referred to a long straight on the test track as
"the cemetery of the big-end bearings.") In
1925, the company moved to a larger factory in
the Paris suburb of St. Denis to meet rising
demand, and soon had 1,200 workers putting
together 35 cars a day.
In 1926, Moyet's original design would reach
its ultimate expression in the CGSs. The final
"s" in the model's name stood for "surbaissé,"
or "lowered." The rear springs were shortened by
3.9 inches, reducing the wheelbase to 92 inches,
and the front axle was lowered. The brake drums
were enlarged, and the engine was tweaked with a
different camshaft and a bigger sump that raised
oil capacity from 4.2 quarts to 6.3. Now rated
at 35hp, the engine could propel the CGSs to a
claimed maximum speed of 72 mph. Two-seat
boattail bodywork was offered, steel over a wood
frame with cycle fenders.
"This thoroughbred car offers great speed
with safety because it is provided with powerful
front wheel brakes and its roadholding is
impeccable, thanks to its suspension and its
meticulously studied weight distribution,"
enthused the Moto-Revue. All the young
speed demons lusted after one--at least, those
who couldn't yet afford a Bugatti Type 37. "The
CGSs was not only a high point in the history of
Amilcar, but also in the annals of the sports
cars of the late 1920s," wrote Gilles Fournier in
his 1994 history of the marque, Amilcar.
Amilcar never raced the CGSs, having
developed a twin-cam, 1,096cc straight six for
its competition CO model in 1926, but some of
those 984 buyers did--or at least satisfied
themselves by admiring the car's racy image. The
model was withdrawn from production in 1929.
Amilcar itself would last only another decade,
encountering management turmoil and trying to
reinvent itself as a large-car builder in
response to the public's changing tastes and the
changing world economy. Taken over in 1937 by
Hotchkiss, Amilcar brought J.A. Gregoire's
brilliant, front-wheel-drive Compound model to
production before flickering out in 1940.
Amilcar's reign as a builder of the world's
ultimate sporting cyclecars was all too brief,
but its CGSs stands as a gorgeous reminder of
when all the pieces came together perfectly for
the little company from St. Denis.
Owner's Story
"'What is it?' 'Is it a kit car?' 'Did you make
it?' Along with lots of smiles, these are the
typical questions that I face when I'm stopped
at a light or at a local car show or cruise-in,"
said Scott Barton, the owner of our 1926 CGSs
feature car. "I find that most people haven't
even heard of Amilcar before, which is not too
surprising given their limited existence and
fabrication far from these shores."
Scott found this example through an online
auction, and discovered that it had once been
part of the fabled Bill Harrah collection in
Reno, Nevada. "As I soon found out, the marque
has a passionate and enthusiastic following that
has been very helpful with advice when needed.
After dealing with the normal stuff (mostly a
clogged fuel line), the car ran great--most of
the time," he said. With the help of fellow
Amilcar owner Ed Godshalk of Oregon, he dialed
in the carburetion by finding the right
combination of jet and venturi. "The car now
warms up quickly, and is not lacking for power
and doesn't go through hiccups and gasping at
higher speeds. Ed, by the way, did the Mille
Miglia in his CGS, so he needed it tuned within
an inch of its life."
"I still haven't driven the car all that
much," Scott said. "The longest single trip was
about 80 miles, and I can tell you that you
definitely feel it even after that length. So I
think the Mille Miglia's out of the question!"
What to Pay
Low: $30,000
Average: $54,000
High: $80,000
Club Scene
Le Cercle Pégase Amilcar
13 rue des Moutots
21200 Chorey lès Beaune
France
33-03-80-22-37-90
pagesperso-orange.fr/amilcar/cercle/navigation_ce.htm
Dues: 55 euros ($88)/year;
Membership: 300
