1924 Voisin C11 Lumineuse

Gabriel Voisin shifted his attention from aeronautics to cars at the end of World War I. Voisin based his engines on the American engineer Charles Knight’s sleeve-valve patents, and they were indeed much quieter than those using poppet valves. They also tended to smoke a little as oil lubricating the sleeves sliding around the pistons burned off, and they were generally less powerful than rival engines of the same displacement. Voisin’s cars had great standing, and were used by the president of France and numerous ministers. A born polemicist, Voisin wrote sharp letters to magazines, organizers of competitions and his clients explaining why his ideas were correct and those of others made little sense.

Voisin surrounded himself with gifted collaborators, including Andre Lefebvre, a brilliant aeronautical engineer who dealt with chassis and structure, and Noel Noel who was responsible for the bodywork from 1921 to 1935. But the ideas exemplified by cars such as this Lumineuse were those of Voisin himself. He moved the passenger compartment forward so as to carry all passengers comfortably within the wheelbase, increased the side window area, and placed luggage lockers well forward to assure near-equal weight on each wheel. Voisin’s cars were low-built to minimize frontal area, but in the early years he was more concerned about spaciousness than low-drag aerodynamics.

The whole motor industry eventually adopted many of Voisin’s ideals, rarely with any acknowledgement of his pioneering work. His spirit of innovation and rationality was transferred to another French marque when he was obliged by the economic crisis of 1929 to let Lefebvre go, placing him with Andre Citroen.

These extracts are taken from Auto Legends: Classics of Style and Design by Michel Zumbrunn, text by Robert Cumberford which was published in October by Merrell