Bing, Bang... Bignan

Founded by Jacques Bignan in 1918, the Bignan Sport was built in Courbevoie, a suburb in the West of Paris. The first model was a 17 CV equipped with a 4 cylinder engine (85 x 130) which was produced until 1922. A quite good car which allows Albert Guyot to win the Grand Prix de Corse. Then, from 1923, a smaller model, the type 17000, a 2 liter straight four engine was built until 1929. Some of these cars raced in competition with few successes: the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1923, the 24 hours of SPA in 1924.

In 1926, the company is bankrupted and bought by Emile Précloux. The new Bignan cars are then mounted with CIME, SCAP or Salmson engine. The production completely stopped in 1931.

Le Gotha de l'Automobile Française

This book, written by two enthusiasts, two experts, is a tribute to the French luxury cars through the most beautiful models produced by the automobile manufacturers of France, from the very beginning of the 20th century to the late `50s.

The authors gave free rein to their passion for us to share their admiration and enthusiasm for this great adventure too little known of the luxurious French automobile. They chose several hundred of sumptuous photos, of great variety, most of them never published, among the thousands that passed through their hands. They have selected reproductions of the most luxurious catalogues made by French master printers.
These illustrations could totally stand by themselves. However, for those who want to know more about what France has given to luxury cars, these pictures are discussed using precise and varied text, excerpts of period motoring press or catalogs manufacturers, texts from contemporary writers.

Today, while cars are designed and built-in by computers, it is good to evoke time when it was the men who drew and built them with their hands. This is a mural of more than a century of sumptuous cars, real objects of art and mechanical perfection, bodies of sublime beauty that unfolds before our eyes throughout these pages, showing that if the automobile industry was born in France, this country has also invented the concept of the luxury car.

Le Gotha de l'Automobile Française

Claude Rouxel, Laurent Friry

Publisher : ETAI, 2010

ISBN : 2726888879