Das weltweite Magazin und der Marktplatz für Oldtimer-Enthusiasten – von Enthusiasten.
Das weltweite Magazin und der Marktplatz für Oldtimer-Enthusiasten – von Enthusiasten.
Now here’s a duo of Friday Ladies to charm us! These women are Madame Kow and an unknown girl. Mme. Kow was wife to Alexis Kojewnikow, better known as Alexis Kow, who made so many beautiful designs, drawings and advertisements for Panhard et Levassor and Hotchkiss in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly as a freelancer.
These pictures - the heavily retouched coloured version was publicized widely - date back to 1934 and were taken during the concours d’elegance at Bagatelle in France that year. We can only assume that the car was indeed blue with yellow accents as in the colourized variant. Note that Mme. Kow and the little girl are dressed in matching colours up to the shoes, gloves, corsage, handbag and supposedly even the dog's lead.
The car is described as a Panhard et Levassor 6CS RL-N Coupé X72 Belka, but we don’t know what ‘Belka’ denotes. A coachbuilder? If so it is one we have never heard of before. The Lane Motor Museum has a similarly styled coupe, which it describes as a ‘faux cabriolet (coupé) in ‘DERKA’ trim, which originally came with a 4.1-litre inline six-cylinder sleeve-valve engine’. It was sold new in 1933 to a Monsieur Lagouche.
The museum’s website says, ‘Perhaps Lagouche required more power than the standard car offered, because he sent the car back to the factory in December 1934 and had the engine replaced with the larger 4.8-litre inline six engine (now with taxable 27hp) from the X74.” Is Belka perhaps confused with Derka, or the other way round? Could it even be the same car?
Words: Jeroen Booij; picture: archive
De 1933 auto uit het Lane Museum heeft enkel een platte voorruit.
Kow's 1934 Panhard has a three-piece panoramic windshield.
The 1933 car from the Lane Museum only has a flat windshield.