After the First World War, times became too difficult in the Auvergne countryside. Like many others, the Chappe and Gessalin families moved ‘where there was work’, which for them was the Paris region.
The blacksmiths became mechanics, car repairers and, thanks to their manual skills, coachbuilders. Always eager to learn and improve, they discovered new techniques and actively participated in their development.
No job was too daunting for them: building the bodywork for a lorry cab, rebuilding an aluminium racing car, creating a new model from an idea or a drawing, they could do it all. Making steel or aluminium bodywork was no longer profitable or was too heavy for the automotive standards of the time.
No matter, they threw themselves headlong into a new technique, fibreglass resin, the production of which was still almost entirely to be perfected. They soon became uncontested specialists, to whom all small-series manufacturers entrusted their work.
From Stera to Grégoire, via Alpine, D.B., René Bonnet and Charles Deutsch, everyone will praise the studies conducted and the work subcontracted by the small Chappe and Gessalin team.
And then came the apotheosis: weary of creating for others, bored of wondering what jobs they would be entrusted with tomorrow, the craftsmen for whom anything is always possible decided to build their own cars.
Very soon, success will be assured. First through elegant and fast convertibles and coupés, then with increasingly sophisticated and high-performance racing cars, C.G.'s partnership with Simca will prove extremely productive and promising. A beautiful dream that the 1974 oil crisis will bring to such an unpredictable and definitive end.
Chappe et Gessalin - Les Artisans constructeurs features 127 pages and 182 images. Text in French.
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