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JEAN DANINOS, engineer & manufacturer
Facel Vega, Paris
From: Times Newspapers Ltd. MONDAY OCTOBER 29 2001©
JEAN DANINOS was the creator of France’s last top-drawer motorcar, the Facel Vega
— a car beloved of the rich and famous, and sometimes called
the French Rolls-Royce. But the Facel of 1954-64 was only
the high point in a diverse design and engineering career
that stretched back to the 1920s and continued into the 1990s.
The Facel Vega was a response to the gradual disappearance
after the Second World War of France’s prestige makes: by
1954 Bugatti, Delage, Delahaye and Hotchkiss had all vanished
from the showrooms. Based on prewar engineering, these cars
were stodgily designed and their manufacture had proved economically
unviable. Drawing on his previous experience building special-bodied
Bentleys and Fords, Daninos came up with an appreciably more
modern and more sporting interpretation of the luxury car:
a simple round-tube chassis, a beefy Chrysler V8 engine, and
lithe if slightly flashy coupé coachwork.
It was a recipe that won instant acclaim, and the socially well-connected Daninos soon had a customer list of top industrialists, racing drivers, diplomats and royalty, as well as the inevitable showbiz stars. Prominent owners included the Shah of Iran, the King of Morocco, Stirling Moss, Ringo Starr and the cinéastes Louis Malle and François Truffaut. Another Facel-Véga owner was the publisher Michel Gallimard, and it was in his car that Albert Camus met his death in 1960.
Over the years, the Facel Vega’s lines evolved, the design
changes culminating in the less flamboyant and stylishly glassy
Facel II of 1961. Three years before the mainstay coupé had
been joined by a four-door limousine known as the Excellence.
And in 1959 a smaller model, the Facellia, was introduced,
with a four-cylinder engine made specially for Facel. In ten
years, however, barely 3,000 Facel-Végas of all types were
built.
A student at the Ecole des Arts et Métiers in Paris, Daninos completed his engineering training in England, and in 1928 he joined Citroën. Specialising in body design and construction, he played an important part in the creation of the coupé and roadster versions of Citroën’s legendary “Traction Avant” model, and at the same time styled and had made his own bespoke Citroën roadster.
Asking for André Citroën’s dispensation to show the elegant two-seater at a concours d'élégance, he was taken aback by a refusal: if Daninos were to show his car, the boss told him, the firm would never be able to sell any of its own more staidly styled roadsters.
After the collapse of the Citroën company in 1934 and its
takeover by Michelin, Daninos moved to the aircraft industry.
Becoming a specialist in stainless steel, he helped to develop,
for Morane-Saulnier, France’s first fighter plane with electrically
welded stainless-steel wings. In 1939 he set up Facel — Forges
et Ateliers de Construction d’Eure-et-Loir— to specialise
in presswork for the car and aircraft industries. But the
French capitulation in 1940 forced it to switch from the manufacture
of aero-engines and aircraft components to the rather more
prosaic assembly of wood-burner conversions for cars and lorries
in petrol-deprived occupied France.
Daninos himself spent most of the war years in America, managing two factories producing aircraft components. He returned to France in 1945, but not before he had designed a ticket-vending machine, an ice-cube dispenser with the daunting name of the “Panelectric Cuberator”, and a range of machine tools — all products that had a long commercial life.
Facel now returned to subcontract presswork, and derived a respectable income from making hubcaps, bumpers, radiator grilles and the like for the French motor industry — along with a highly profitable line in stainless-steel sinks. Between 1947 and 1953 it also made the bodies for Panhard’s Baroque-styled small car, the Dyna X. Other such contracts included bodying pick-ups for Simca, a Jeep-style vehicle for Delahaye, and the rudimentary panelling for the French version of the famous “Grey Fergie” Ferguson tractor.
Better known, though, were the 23,500 Simca coupés and sports-convertibles that Facel made between 1950 and 1962. Built initially to a design by the Italian stylist Pinin Farina, they ended up with typically elegant coachwork styled by Daninos.
While he appreciated the financial benefits of the liaison
with the mass- producing Simca, the run of 17 Bentley coupés
that Facel made between 1948 and 1951 was closer to Daninos’
heart. These Bentleys, called the Cresta and made to a design
by Farina, were followed by a one-off Daninos-designed Bentley
for his wife, and by a run of more than 2,000 Facel-built
coupés based on Ford-France’s ill-received V8 Vedette. These
three cars helped to establish the basic design themes for
the Facel Vega: low build, slab sides, a compact glasshouse
with no central pillar, and a radiator grille flanked by two
subsidiary air intakes.
With its potent performance, exuberant styling and plush interior — latterly characterised by a splendid painted-metal imitation-wood dashboard — the Facel coupé was well received, especially outside France: at one stage more than 75 per cent were exported. But to keep his head above water, Daninos needed to make the more affordable small Facellia in relatively large numbers. Alas, it gained a reputation for engine problems and sales fell away — just as the money-spinning Simca contracts were drawing to a close.
Facel was restructured, with Mobil Oil taking over the running of the company. Daninos and the new managing director did not get on. The firm slid into bankruptcy during 1962. Passing into receivership, it was kept in operation by a branch of nationalised Sud-Aviation.
The Facellia was given a new Volvo power unit, and a new model with an Austin-Healey engine was introduced. But with sales of the once- profitable big V8 Facels down to a trickle, the French Government pulled the plug in 1964.
Daninos tried to arrange a tie-up with Rover, which could
have seen the Facel Vega assembled in Britain, but General
de Gaulle refused to sanction an association with a British
company, so Facel was dismantled. Daninos then spent 18 years
working with a Portuguese company manufacturing four-wheel-drive
vehicles.
A compact, sturdy man with a gentlemanly poise and elegance that never deserted him, Jean Daninos somehow defied the passing of the years. A one-time Olympic skater and an enthusiastic skier and squash player when younger, he remained sprightly in his old age, and was in his nineties before he gave up his Porsche Carrera. In his later years he published three books on his cars.
Daninos was twice married; both wives predeceased him. He is survived by the two sons of his second marriage, and by his brother, the writer Pierre Daninos.
Jean Daninos, engineer and motor manufacturer, was born on December 6, 1906. He died on October 13, 2001, aged 94.
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