Unique Voisin: unloved ‘four’ to Pebble Beach winner

By Mick Walsh

| 29 Aug 2025

Classic & Sports Car – The Voisin one-off that triumphed at Pebble Beach concours

Flowing wings and long dresses, jazzy bumpers and spectacular hats, two-tone paint schemes and dazzling Art Deco prints: the combination of bespoke coachwork, glamorous fashion and beautiful people pulled big crowds to the Bois de Boulogne for concours d’élégance competitions in Paris in the 1930s.

With the exception of Italy, few countries could match the style of these events and, when it came to extravagant swooping bodywork, no-one could rival the wild forms of French coachbuilders.

In that golden era, the bespoke work of Saoutchik, Figoni et Falaschi and Franay were as well known as the fashion houses of Hermès, Chanel and Dior.

The Voisin’s badge celebrates its designer’s early aviation achievements

These glittering public events attracted huge interest yet, even if you couldn’t afford the latest models from Ettore Bugatti or Louis Delage, you weren’t automatically precluded from entering.

There was always the option of restyling a more humble chassis from the likes of Renault, Citroën or Peugeot.

Cheaper still was the possibility of finding a secondhand car, stripping off its outdated body and taking it to a back-street specialist for a fresh, new look.

Such practice was common, particularly in Paris where even old competition cars were given dramatic touring coachwork.

Often to hide the outdated and ordinary specification underneath, these older models were fitted with the most mouthwatering styles.

Dress-up bodykits are nothing new, but between the wars these unheralded artisans produced designs to rival the famous names.

Just such an enterprise was based at a small garage in the Paris suburb of Le Vallois, around the corner from the prestigious, high-profile Figoni coachworks.

You won’t find the old Voisin dealership of Saliot in Nick Georgano’s encyclopedia of coachbuilding but, unlike many more famous names, its styling has won at Pebble Beach, the world’s most prestigious concours d’élégance.

This unique Voisin’s Knight-type sleeve-valve ‘four’ sits well forward under the long bonnet

Perhaps more surprising still is that Saliot’s victorious coachwork graced a quirky 2.5-litre four-cylinder Voisin chassis.

Normally it takes an exotic supercharged straight-eight or a V12 to turn Pebble Beach judges’ heads, but New York collector Sam Mann has a talent for spotting potential.

With two Best of Shows to his credit, Sam hugely enjoys this sport, which counts some of America’s wealthiest people as competitive contestants.

As in business, they all love to win, but money doesn’t always equal good taste.

Having won with a one-off Chrysler Imperial – wearing special speedster bodywork built for Walter Chrysler himself – and a spectacular Delage D8S with De Villars bodywork, Sam started looking for something different with which to score his hat-trick.

The discovery of this mysterious Voisin came about by chance in 1998.

A phone call from dealer Don Williams informing Sam of the sale of cars from the Imperial Palace Collection tempted him enough to fly out to Las Vegas.

Gabriel Voisin’s monogram is cast into this classic car’s pedals

“We’d looked at cars and finished up at Don’s desk, where our conversation was interrupted by a phone call,” he recalls.

“While Don was chatting I picked up some photos that were scattered helter-skelter all over the desk. One was this amazing Voisin with the most fantastic bonnet line.

“Someone had been trying to sell it to Don but he said: ‘It’s nothing, just a four-cylinder, not your type of car.’ But that didn’t put me off. I was really interested and asked him to buy it for me.”

Bought unseen, the Voisin arrived at Sam’s home workshop in 1998.

“Mechanically it was in good shape, other than the gearbox, and the body had already been painted black but with a red side flash which we later learned it had during the ’30s,” he recalls.

“This I felt didn’t help its style, so we decided it should be all black.

“Some people suggested that the engine had been moved back in the chassis, but when we stripped it down it was clear that only the scuttle had been repositioned to give the body that long look.

“In the 1930s, Saliot had removed a chassis crossmember to relocate the cockpit as far back as possible. As a result, you could jack up one corner and the whole chassis would twist. But the car was complete.”

The Voisin made its original debut at Bois de Boulogne, Paris, in 1935

The chassis design looks very vintage once stripped of its sensational body.

In classic Voisin fashion, the engine is a Knight-type sleeve-valve that the great aviator claimed was more refined than a conventional four-stroke in spite of its very smoky exhaust on start-up.

There’s no exotic V12, like in the C20, or lusty straight-six, but a 64bhp, 2.5-litre ‘four’ with twin Zenith 26 carburettors coupled up to a two-speed gearbox with Cotal unit behind giving you two further top ratios and semi-automatic selection.

The drum brakes are cable-operated, assisted by a vacuum servo, and the steering is worm-and-nut.

A novelty for a Voisin is the straight-through exhaust, while the Telecontrol friction dampers can be adjusted from the cockpit.

The origins of the chassis are unclear. It is known that one Monsieur Delacluse ordered it in 1931 but, rather than the factory’s razor-edge body style, he preferred something more fashionable and took it to Saliot.

Some reports state that the chassis was already four years old and a cancelled order, while others claim that, as a trusted Voisin garage, Saliot had cleared out the factory stores and the C15 chassis, a previous crash repair, had come with the spares.

The one-off Voisin’s superb Deco sidelight

Credit for the design of its breathtaking bodywork is also unclear.

Some maintain it was built from a sketch by M Delacluse, while the 1935 issue of La Carrosserie credits the car’s lines to a mystery ‘Giron’ and another journal lists Edouard Vaillant, who was also based in Le Vallois, near Saliot’s garage.

There is even a story that a group of workers moonlighting from Figoni et Falaschi built it.

Whatever its origins, the Voisin’s spectacular 21ft-long profile with amazing, 16-vent bonnet, sexy black paint and chromed Rudge 16in wire wheels was the star of concours events in 1935.

On one occasion, Delacluse presented it with the ’screen folded flat on the scuttle and an all-female crew sporting white berets.

Once the mechanicals were sorted, Sam’s team started the detail work.

From an early stage the car was considered a potential Pebble Beach winner and Sam, a successful product designer, couldn’t resist embellishing the already sensational design with some of his own ideas.

These custom details included subtly improving the base of the front wings to enhance its lines, a revised starter cowl, and witty new catches for the bonnet and the spare wheel spinner, which echo the wings of Voisin’s famous mascot.

The Voisin’s stylised mascot turns heads

A passionate connoisseur of pre-WW2 French car design, Sam sourced several elegant features to complete the car including a set of superb Marchal headlamps and a pair of Clearson-Sanor horns.

The interior matches the extravagant exterior, with the dazzling, engine-turned dashboard sitting under the scuttle and fitted with an array of handsome Jaeger instruments, with a huge speedometer and rev counter sited in the middle.

Following the restoration trend of the late ’90s, Sam selected tan ostrich skin to trim the seats and the door panels.

The result might not be to everyone’s taste, but it certainly matches the flamboyance of the rest of the car.

During the restoration, Sam decided to close his shop and moved the project to Stone Barn in Vienna, New Jersey, where former employee Lance Dean continued the job.

“The sheet-metal work was crude in places, but Ritchie Fass’ team did a fantastic job,” says Sam.

With whitewall tyres and the rakish hood clipped down taut over the shallow, pillar-box windscreen, the Voisin looks as if it had driven straight out of the pages of an F Scott Fitzgerald novel.

The Saliot-bodied Voisin is a striking classic car

Not surprisingly, it dazzled judges at Pebble Beach in 2002, where Sam collected Best of Show number three.

Such is the nature of the event that rumours soon spread about the body being a recreation, but this was mostly sour grapes because so few knew the little-seen car other than Voisin experts.

When you’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars restoring a super-exotic Duesenberg or Ferrari, it must really hurt to see a mystery French car with a name most struggle to pronounce and only a ‘four-banger’ motor steal the show.

Rightly, Sam felt pretty smug about realising the Voisin’s true potential and its success continued at Amelia Island in 2004, when it stole the show against such beauties as Peter Williamson’s ex-Rothschild Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic.

While connoisseurs appreciated more the striking, Jean Bugatti-styled coupé, the Voisin’s more classical proportions were a big hit among the judges and public alike.

In America, you can’t beat a long bonnet and, at Amelia, ‘raising the hood’ is not mandatory.

The switch for the Voisin’s Cotal preselector is on the steering column

Braving New York traffic with a Pebble Beach winner is an unnerving experience, especially when you’ve studied the Heath-Robinson-style extensions to the controls that look like the motoring equivalent of stilts.

The steering feels dead and lifeless when manoeuvring slowly, and the sleeve-valve’s characteristic lack of low-down torque doesn’t help.

Add in its tall gearing and first impressions aren’t happy but, once up to speed, the Voisin starts to come to life.

Quickly, the remote gearstick is slotted back to second and as revs build the change switches to the Cotal system.

As our speed increases, the steering lightens and gains feel and the engine note takes on a ruder rasp, but the smokescreen behind could have inspired Ian Fleming.

Even knowing that most of that long stretch of black bonnet is empty doesn’t spoil the effect of the majestic view ahead past the proud mascot.

The Voisin’s Jaeger dials are set into the engine-turned dashboard

Turn-in is excellent and, with the chassis now well braced, there’s little twist, so the scuttle doesn’t shake over bumps.

Recall that Voisins had some impressive competition breeding, including record runs, and its sporting character shouldn’t come as such a surprise.

But ultimately you can’t see this car ever covered with road grime or splashing through the rain at night.

Which is a shame because it looks amazing on the move. Just imagine its distorted reflection in shop windows down Fifth Avenue – pure Cruella de Vil.

Sam has more exotic French machinery bought purely for driving pleasure, but it’s good to know this four-cylinder upstart keeps such thoroughbred company at home, just as it did for a special Voisin tribute at Pebble Beach in 2006.

Images: James Mann

Paul Russell: a winning restorer’s top tips

So what does it take to win the world’s most prestigious concours d’élégance? Few know better than Massachusetts-based Paul Russell & Company, whose record includes not one but two Best of Shows for client Ralph Lauren.

“We like to know what the goals are at the beginning of a restoration, particularly if it’s Pebble Beach – although I like to say it doesn’t matter,” says Paul.

“People’s prejudices and opinions have not kept up with the developments at the event. Today, it takes a lot more research to win because authenticity and original construction are much more in the minds of judges.

“The idea that a restoration has to be over the top to win is not true, and many classes have penalties for such a finish.

“For example, the Ferrari class judges will dock five points for a non-original detail and with that penalty you might as well not be on the field. Ten years ago, chrome wheels were not an issue but now they have to be an original option.

“Entrants go to great lengths to find period details and this goes way beyond a full toolkit. They love the minutiae, such as having operating tags on the radio and original manuals.

“With all our restorations the paint is not very different, but for Pebble it’s the inner areas that get much more attention.”

Paul claims the top end of the market is driven by Pebble Beach, and he has a list of clients looking for something fresh to enter: “It takes a car with a special flair that is a departure from traditional body styles. Better still if it’s a one-off.

“There are some special bodies on Mercedes-Benz S-types that I’d love to discover and restore, particularly the Hans Stuck car.

“Erdmann & Rossi also produced some spectacular designs, many of which are missing.”

This was first in our April 2005 magazine; all information was correct at the date of original publication

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