1913 de Dion Bouton Bicycle
I found this beautiful De Dion in the Charente area of France. Normally, finding a bike in such a location would present many problems to get it home. But when I spotted it for sale, my French friend Alain happened to be visiting me on his way to collect some vintage British motorcycles. When I mentioned it to him, he told me his parents lived less than 5 miles away from the sellers, Christophe and Celine. Problem solved. Alain is arranging collection and will bring it over to me on his next visit, for Beaulieu Autojumble. I’ll take more photos and add a description then.
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De Dion Bouton Maps
The company produced maps between 1900 and 1920 as an ‘upmarket’ means of advertising. It was a novel idea at the time.
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HISTORY of DE DION BOUTON
Marquis Albert De Dion was an industrialist and automotive genius. He pioneered many ‘firsts’ for the automotive industry and recognized the power and potential of the gasoline engine. He teamed with Georges Bouton, an engineer, and together they produced a self-propelled steam vehicle in 1882. To improve the ride of the vehicle a light rear axle was invented and later patented under the name ‘de Dion’. In 1890 they patented a gasoline single cylinder engine and in 1895 they were producing vehicles. The single cylinder engine was also used to power sporting tricycles until 1901.
In 1985 De Dion created the first automobile club and in 1898 organized an auto show in Paris, the first auto show the world had ever seen. By the close of the 1890’s, the 3.5 horsepower rear-engined petite voiture had become the world’s first series-production small car.
Over 150 various motorcycle and automobile manufacturers bought licenses to build the Bouton and De Dion engine. By 1900 De Dion and Bouton was the world’s largest maker of automobiles with annual production of 400 cars and 3,200 engines. By 1904 De Dion had supplied over 40,000 engines produced by their Puteaux facility.*
The advert below is from 1901:
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The Dreyfuss Affair and the Tour de France
The Tour de France has an odd heritage: its origins come from political conflict and a circulation war between competing sports newspapers. The editor of the main sports newspaper Le Velo supported Alfred Dreyfus in the notorious ‘Dreyfus Affair.’ The Comte de Dion was an anti-dreyfusard and helped set up a rival newspaper L’Auto.
As a publicity stunt, the editor of L’Auto, Henri Desgrange, revived the Paris-Brest Road Race, which had last been run in 1891. But it did not create enough interest. So, in 1903, he established a bicycle race that covered 2400 kilometres in 19 days and embraced the whole of France. The name came from Le Tour de la France par deus enfants, a well-loved schoolbook that had sold six million copies since its publication in 1896.
The Dreyfus Affair: With overtones of anti-semitism and post-war paranoia, Dreyfus was accused of selling secrets to France’s old enemy, the Germans.
As different sides of society insisted he was guilty or innocent (he was eventually cleared but only after dishonour, discharge, and a rigged trial had banished him to an island prison camp) the split came close to civil war and still have their echoes in modern French society. Many felt that anti-Semitism led to identifying the Jewish Dreyfus as a scapegoat to protect the institution of the French Army.
Two years later, in 1896, evidence came to light identifying a French Army major named Esterhazy as the real culprit. High-ranking military officials suppressed this new evidence and Esterhazy was unanimously acquitted on the second day of his court martial. Instead of being exonerated, Alfred Dreyfus was further accused on the based on false documents fabricated by French counter-intelligence officers covering their colleague Esterhazy.
Word of the military court’s framing of Alfred Dreyfus and of an attendant cover-up began to spread, largely due to a vehement public protestation in a Paris newspaper by writer Emile Zola. The case had to be re-opened and Alfred Dreyfus was brought back from Guiana in 1899 to be tried again. The intense political and judicial scandal that ensued divided French society between those who supported Dreyfus (the Dreyfusards) and those who condemned him (the anti-Dreyfusards).
France’s largest sports paper, Le Vélo, mixed sports coverage with political comment. Its editor, Pierre Giffard, believed Dreyfus innocent and said so, leading to acrid disagreement with his main advertisers. Among them were the automobile-maker the Comte de Dion and the industrialist Clément.
Frustrated at Giffard’s politics at Le Vélo, they planned a rival paper. The editor was a prominent racing cyclist, Henri Desgrange, who had published a book of cycling tactics and training and was working as a publicity writer for Clément. The new paper became simply L’Auto, and was printed on yellow paper because Giffard used green.
Circulation was sluggish, however, and only a crisis meeting called “to nail Giffard’s beak shut”, as Desgrange phrased it, came to its rescue. A 23-year-old cycling and rugby writer called Géo Lefèvre suggested a race round France, bigger than any other paper could rival and akin to six-day races on the track. The Tour De France was the salvation of Le Vélo, a newspaper born to support the charges against Captain Dreyfus.
Eventually, all the accusations against Alfred Dreyfus were demonstrated to be baseless. He was aquitted, retired as a Major, and returned to active duty in World War One, where he served his country honorably and left as a Lieutenant-Colonel.**
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The End of de Dion Bouton: With national tragedies such as World War I and the onset of the Great Depression, the De Dion company began to struggle financially. During 1927 it ceased production temporarily and when it resumed production it had a new 2.5-liter straight eight-cylinder and a 2-liter four-cylinder engine. Sales were sluggish so the decision was made to increase the displacement to 3-liters in 1930.
In 1932 the last automobile produced by the De Dion Company was produced. It continued to produce trucks until the close of the 1940’s when it shifted its focus to servicing automobiles, trucks, and motorcycles.
Undoubtedly one of the most important pioneers of the automobile, the de Dion Bouton company is not so well-known as a cycle manufacturer. But their bicycles were made with as much attention to quality as their three and four-wheelers.
They had already been manufacturing tricycles for some time before adding bicycles to their sales line; they often sold trikes unbadged to allow other companies to mount the engines and market them under their individual names. The De Dion Bouton bicycle pictured in the advert below – ‘Nouvelle Sensationelle!’ Elegante et Robuste!’ is from 1909.
Company names have always been a marketable commodity, and reputable car, motorcycle or bicycle manufacturer marques were often purchased after the company itself ceased trading. The De Dion Bouton name was bought by Dilecta in 1935 and, after WW2, Dilecta badged some of their bicycles and cyclemotors as De Dion Bouton le Blanc.
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* text from http://www.conceptcarz.com/vehicle/z10259/De-Dion-Bouton.aspx
** text from http://vannevar.blogspot.com/2009/07/tour-de-france-dreyfus-affair-anti.html
