14 Dec 06
French aristocrat Albert de Dion (who put up the money) and Georges Bouton (the engineering talent) are best known for the automotive innovation known as the de Dion axle: a solid tubular beam with universal joints at the wheel hubs and differential, semi-independent to the rear suspension. De Dion-Bouton also made the first mass-production V8 petrol engine (1910), a design which inspired millions of similarly configured units, not least those of Swiss-born Louis Chevrolet, who started his career in a De Dion dealership in Brooklyn. Albert de Dion is also credited with starting the world's first car club, organising the world's first motor show in Paris in 1898, and producing the earliest articulated vehicle (1894); some claim that the 3.5hp De Dion 'petite voiture' (1898) was the world's first series-production (if not mass-production) car.
De Dion-Bouton was also, for a while, the world's largest vehicle-maker. Having started out with steam-powered cars and tricycles, the company moved from small cars into trucks, fire engines, buses and other public-service vehicles, which it supplied worldwide. And it also supplied engines to other manufacturers - including aeroplane-makers. The first flying De Dion engine was not a plane, though: it was the airship of Brazilian adventurer Alberto Santos-Dumont, who took the engine out of his tricycle and fitted it to a balloon (1898) winning prizes and even establishing a commuter route in Paris between Neuilly St James and St Cloud. Come World War I, the De Dion engines were ready for supply to the military; French-built planes by Maurice Farman used them (as well as Renault units), with the MF 11 a successful reconnaissance plane serving on the Western Front and in the Dardanelles and Mesopotamia; there were even Russian-built seaplane variants.
However, post-war, De Dion did not capitalise on this, concentrating on its cars and trucks; struggling against new competition and economic decline, it pulled out of car-making in 1932; its commercial vehicle division folded in the late 1940s and its motorcycle activities in the 1950s.
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