About tough to crack car puzzle #129: Grégoire Sport Cabriolet

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Suggestions on the exact model designation of last week’s puzzle car varied from Gregoire Cabrio to Tracta Grégoire-Sport by Capron and all possible combinations. We stick to Grégoire Sport Cabriolet. Surely a rare motor with 10 examples believed to have seen the day of light between 1956 and 1962. Or even less? Paul Jaray wrote: “Jean-Albert Grégoire has been involved in several projects. Tracta front-wheel driven cars, the lightweight chassis for the '38 Amilcar Compound, A.F.G. all-alloy prototypes (that inspired the Dyna-x, the Kendall the Hartnett and Kaiser), and CGE electric cars.” He went on dishing up details about this particular Gregoire project, developed from the Gregoire-Hotchkiss 1951 prototype and says 15 cars were completed and 10 sold. His answer was hard to beat for pure fact. Alan Spencer, however, said that “Aside from the aluminum prototype, just four examples were built in steel.” This while Ruud Wesselink knew the design came from Carlo Delaisse and the car on our picture had been owned by Monsieur Gregoire himself. But Tobias Wenzel said: “The first owner until 1964 was named Lorton. Second owner was Jacques Legrand who gave the car to his nephew in 1998.” All very interesting.

Steve Bousfield and others added the technical detail: “It has a 2188cc flat four engine developing 120 bhp with a Constantin supercharger and driving the front wheels”, while Till Jauernig mentioned the use of aluminium pressure molding parts in the engine bay area. Alan Spencer mentioned an excellent fun fact: “The father of the famous novelist Françoise Sagan was a close friend and supporter of Mr. Grégoire.” Very nice, but we most liked Bernard Correge who’s answer ticked all the factual boxes, but gained more points about the picture location in two replies. First he wrote: “The photograph is taken on the Grenelle bridge not far away from where Jean-Albert Grégoire lived.” But he came back on that, adding: “Appologies for my haste. It’s not the Grenelle bridge but the one on the other side – the Bir-Hakeim bridge, the one seen in the movie ‘Last Tango in Paris’. Great! Thank you Bernard.

(Pictures courtesy Artcurial Motor Cars)

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