Greg O’s Garage: From the Peter Helck Collection: Strange and Unusual Cars #3-1926 Claveau 9CV
Years after Howard Kroplick received the Helck Family Collection, we are still finding surprising items deep in the files.
This time, we've come across a small box titled 'W.F. Bradley' containing about a dozen and a half photos of some of the most unusual cars ever seen. Starting in 1903, the year of the ill-fated Paris-Madrid race, W. F. Bradley began his career as a talented automotive journalist. He not only followed the Gordon Bennett Cup races and the French Grands Prix, but went to America to take part in the Glidden Tours, the first long distance reliability trials held in the USA. He also saw the start of the amazing New York-Paris Race and the beginnings of American track racing on Long Island and at Indianapolis. There is no doubt that a preeminent automotive painter and historian such as Helck would know of a journalist with the stature of Bradley.
I am slowly beginning to uncover what some of these unique automobiles are, but information on most of the autos is very difficult to ascertain due to their rarity and uniqueness. On to vehicle #3...
Greg O.
Photo #3 starts to show a pattern in the Helck/W.F. Bradley photo box. Most of these cars seem to display different approaches to aerodynamics and/or streamlining that started to take hold in the 1920's.
This little French job fits the bill. The 1926 Claveau 9CV.
Emile Claveau, designer of this little oddity, was not an engineer. He studied painting at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris before getting into automotive design in 1923. Becoming bored with typical designs of the day, he envisioned something more interesting with more passenger room. Work on his torpedo like 4CV model came about first in 1923 and progressed to the 9CV shown here at the 1927 Paris Auto Show.
The flat, mid-mounted 4 cylinder engine drove the rear wheels and like a '48 Tucker, VW Beetle and other rear and mid-engine vehicles, it offered a bit more interior space without a driveline hump. The easily-accessed flat 4 with it's lower center of gravity and 4-wheel independent suspension most likely provided a decent handling car for its day.
Unfortunately for Claveau, the 9CV, like the rest of his creations, were never popular and failed to catch on.
The earlier Torpedo 4CV
Found on the Internet was this modern-looking color photo of the car, so the car may still exist, but I was unable to ascertain its current whereabouts.
Claveau started up again after WW2. He began promoting his new “Claveau Déscartes”, with an advanced 2292 cc 85 hp V8 motor, a five-speed gear box and front wheel drive. Claveau presented a 1 to 5 scale model of the Descartes in a perspex box at the 1947 Paris Motor Show.
Emile Claveau's last car came as a '5CV' prototype and presented again at the Paris Auto Show in 1956.
The engine is a two stroke 3 cylinder from DKW, coupled with a four-speed gearbox. It is a unibody with four independent wheels. Rubber rings nested in each other provide the suspension; they were called “anneaux Neiman” and were installed with success on bikes and scooters.
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