Voisin's reality check

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Like many French engineers, Gabriel Voisin was healthily eccentric and, like many French designers, he was also blessed with acute aesthetic sensitivity. At a time when demand for mid-range cars could not quite meet supply, the easiest way to make one car more desirable than another was to clothe it in such a finish as would strike the right balance of being totally outrageous and yet tastefully stylish in that uniquely French manner.

The Voisin C4 was well-engineered but somewhat underpowered, and as Voisin’s cheaper offering it would hardly have been appropriate to encumber it with overly elaborate bodies. As it was, the standard factory conduite intérieure body was daringly attractive in its angularity, but to improve its standing in the market, Voisin – who famously rallied against the overweight, over-styled and over-elaborate offerings of his more humdrum contemporaries – acted against the type and introduced a range of loud, attention-grabbing paint finishes based on the then en vogue pseudo-Scottish tartan. Old stuffed-shirts were quick to criticise, but ownership of such a car made one the envy of high society in Paris and on the Riviera.

This C4S was modified by the factory in period, its original coachwork covered up by new panel work and its angular lines softened. A careful restoration saw the modifications carefully peeled away and the original coachwork rebuilt. The finishing touch was the painstakingly hand-painted MacLeod tartan livery offered from new by the factory. Read about this most fascinating juncture of the motor-car and design fashions in the December issue of The Automobile, available now.

Words by Zack Stiling. Photographs by Nick Clements.

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