There stood enough rusting Opels in the field to make a poignant half-article in Classic & Thoroughbred.
Not shown are a Commodore and a Kadett estate or the lucky runner parked on the verge nearby. Continue reading “Postcard From Schleswig 6”
We look at two proud Frenchmen who were really quite similar and so very different.
There are certain notorious rivalries in motoring history. Many of them were sporting ones, in the Senna-Prost mould, which sometimes went beyond good sense and risked the lives of those involved. But there are also rivalries that at first seemed less visceral, but that had equally grim endings.
One such is that between André Citroën and Louis Renault. Neither were self-made men from humble backgrounds in the vein of Herbert Austin or, even more so, William Morris. Both had comfortable upbringings, André’s possibly less stable due to the suicide of his father. Born within a year of each other, they actually first met as young children attending the same Lyceé. André studied engineering at the prestigious École Polytechnique whereas Louis was self-taught, building his first car before the end of the 19th Century and becoming part of the early history of motoring after forming a company with two of his brothers.
By 1909 both his brothers were dead and Louis was in sole control of Renault. Despite the subsequent images of their companies, it is reasonable to suggest that, despite lacking an engineering qualification, Louis Renault had the more creative and practical engineering mind, though he confined his ideas to Continue reading “Theme : Rivals – The Light and The Dark”
Driven To Write 