French "Hardtop Convertibles" from 1932

A popular body style in America from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s was the "hardtop convertible." Hardtops (as we called them), like true convertibles, lacked a B-pillar above the body beltline.  This gave them a racy appearance without some of the impracticalities of convertibles such as retraction mechanisms, increased susceptibility to damage, and so forth.

The first mass-produced hardtops were from General Motors, and I wrote about them here.  Chrysler had a few built a year or two earlier, but the style seems to have had its genesis in France 15 years earlier in the form of some carrosserie-sourced bodies.

This post deals with some Delage cars with bodies by Letourneur & Marchand.

Here at CarStyleCritic blog's world headquarters I have a fairly good reference library.  But it's not close to the size found in major car museums.  As for France, I have a nearly complete 1930s-subject set of Automobila Hors-Serie publications wherein René Bellu presented the French brands that appeared at the annual Paris auto show.  Bellu provided names of car models in some photo captions, but not all.  And he didn't always include photos of the models I'm dealing with here.  That's one reason why I can't be certain that model names I give in captions below are precise for any given model year.  My other sources are a book about Delage, an issue of Automobile Quarterly dealing with the marque, and scattered information from the Internet that is not always reliable.

To keep things simple, if not necessarily totally accurate, I will refer to two similar bodies by Letourneur & Marchand on Delage six and eight cylinder cars 1936-1939, whether or not those were the exact names used at the time they appeared.  One body type is the Aérosport.  The other had been called the "coach panoramique" by Bellu (who ought to know), referring to the lack a B-pillar.  This is the type that probably was called other names as well, but so far as I can tell had no distinctive official name.  I should add that the model years mentioned below are also problematical because I cannot fully trust some of the Internet-sourced data.

Gallery

This is an example of Letourneur et Marchand's "Yoyo" style on a B-pillorless body for an eight-cylinder Delage.  Internet images of what appears to be the same car have it as either from 1932, 1933 or 1934.  A photo in the Automobile Quarter issue dealing with Delage (Vol. 14, No. 2) has the design date as 1932.  Regardless, aside from the aft side windows being non-retractable, this car can be claimed as an early Hardtop.  (British coachbuilders were making pillarless coupe designs as early as 1933, but that is a subject for another post.)

The first Letourneur et Marchand Aérosport bodies appeared in 1936.  Shown here is a Delage D8-120 auctioned by Hyman, Ltd.  It might be the original one, completed in time for the October 1936 Paris auto show: note its 1937-style fenders.  Its passenger compartment greenhouse has the same side-window spirit as the car in the previous image.  Aérosports are a fastback style that includes a central splitter fin.  The windshield is awkward-looking -- too old-fashioned for the rest of the design.  I don't care for the sweepspear on the side either.

This is a 1936 Delage D6-70 Coach Panoramique.  Six-Cylinder Delages were shorter than the eights.  The side window profile is quite similar to the Aérosport, but the fastback element drops down more drastically.  This is to allow a separate trunk at the rear: all Coach Panoramiques had such a trunk.

The Delage D8-120 Aérosport in this photo has been identified as either from 1937 or 1938.

The above car was heavily restored a few years ago by Cooper Technia.  This photo shows the ash wood body framing.

1937 Delage D6-70 Coach Panoramique.

1937 Delage D6-70 Coach Panoramique auctioned by Artcurial in France.  This shows the rear end arrangement.

Something of an oddity, this 1938 Delage D6-70 has an Aérosport style body.  Note the fastback and the splitter fin.

Another body style twist has this 1937 Delage D8-120 with a Coach Panoramique body.  I saw another one of these auctioned by RM Sotheby's, but called an Aérosport on their web page.  It's possible that Delage and Letourneur et Marchand did call this an Aérosport because it was on a D8-120 chassis rather than the expected D6-70.  Nevertheless, it's a Coach Panoramique.  Note that the aft side window is retracted in the true Hardtop manner.

A body variation of a minor kind is on this 1938 Delage D6-70 Coach Panoramique: a sun-roof.

Mecum auction photo of a 1938 Delage D8-120 Aérosport showing the rear design.

The same car, but identified as a 1939 model on a different Internet site.  Very few such cars were ever built, so that detail probably doesn't matter much.