Claveau Descartes Prototype

Claveau was a minor French car builder run by Émile Claveau, who seems to have been more interested in innovation than production and sales.   But he did exhibit at the Salon de l'Automobile "au Grand-Palais à intervals plus ou moins réguliers" as René Ballu put it in the next-to-final Gallery image below.

The first post- World War 2 Salon opened 3 October 1946, less than a year and a half following the end of the war in Europe and a little more than two years after France was liberated from the Germans.  Claveau had a small stand there, probably displaying a motor and a model of his proposed Claveau Descartes.  A prototype car appeared at the 1948 Salon.

Descartes' styling is of interest because it contains many "car of the future" features dreamed of during the late 1930s and wartime.  Also present were more archaic details.

The Descartes never entered production.

Gallery

The Descartes prototype as displayed at the 1948 Salon.  Noteworthy styling features include the curved front end and its tiny grille.  Headlights are behind transparent covers that blend with the frontal curve.  The windshield is panoramic (wraparound), consisting of four segments: two flat pales V'd at the center and flanked by small curved segments that follow the streamlined forward part of the passenger compartment greenhouse.  Aerodynamically, the car achieved Cx = 0.34, very good at the time.

Overhead view.  The fenderline is flow-through and slab-sided.  Thus the Claveau has the sort of "envelope body" predicted prewar, but not appearing on mass-produced American cars until 1946 when the 1947 Kaisers and Frazers were introduced.  What was not futuristic was the greenhouse segment abaft of the front door.  This six-window configuration and roof shape seem to be from 1937, in the American styling context.  This makes me wonder if Claveau made use of an existing car's passenger compartment structure on the Descartes prototype, though I can find no late-prewar French sedan that would qualify..

Here is Page 21 of Toutes le voitures Française 1947, Salon 1946 - Automobilia Hors-Serie No. 4. This is a large image, and you can click on it to enlarge.  It shows the status of the Claveau Descartes as of the autumn of 1946.

Two years later, another large clickable image.  This from Toutes le voitures Française 1949, Salon 1948 - Automobilia Hors-Serie No. 12 - page 20.  At the lower right is a photo showing the Descartes in side-view.  I have not been able to locate a photo showing the car's rear.