Coachbuilder

A coachbuilder or body-maker is a person or company who manufactures bodies for passenger-carrying vehicles. ^{[note 1]} Coachwork is the body of an automobile, bus, horse-drawn carriage, or railway carriage. The word "coach" was derived from the Hungarian town of Kocs. ^[1] A vehicle body constructed by a coachbuilder may be called a "coachbuilt body" (British English) or "custom body" (American English).

Contents

• Horse-drawn origins
• Automobiles
• Specialist market sector
• Obsolescence
• Ultra-luxury vehicles
• Unibody construction
• Gallery
• List of automobile coachbuilders
• Austria
• Belgium
• China
• Czech Republic
• Denmark
• France
• Germany
• Greece
• Hungary
• India
• Indonesia
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Luxembourg
• Netherlands
• Poland
• Russia
• Spain
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• United Kingdom
• United States
• See also
• Notes
• References
• External links

Prior to the popularization of unibody construction in the 1960s, there were many independent coachbuilders who built bodies on chassis provided by a manufacturer, often for luxury or sports cars. Many manufacturers such as Ferrari outsourced all bodywork to coachbuilders such as Pininfarina and Scaglietti. Coachbuilders also made custom bodies for individual customers. The coachbuilder craftsmen who might once have built bespoke or custom bodies continue to build bodies for short runs of specialized commercial vehicles such as luxury motor coaches or recreational vehicles or motor-home bodied upon a rolling chassis provided by an independent manufacturer. A 'conversion' is built inside an existing vehicle body.

Many renowned automotive coachbuilders are based in Italy and France. In the Italian language, a coachbuilding company is called a carrozzeria, while in the French language it is called a carrosserie.

Horse-drawn origins

A British trade association the Worshipful Company of Coachmakers and Coach Harness Makers was incorporated in 1630. Some British coachmaking firms operating in the 20th century were established even earlier. Rippon was active in the time of Queen Elizabeth I, Barker founded in 1710 by an officer in Queen Anne's Guards. Brewster, the oldest in the U.S., was formed in 1810. ^[2]

Coach-building had reached a high degree of specialization in Britain by the middle of the 19th century. Separate branches of the trade dealt with the timber, iron, leather, brass and other materials used in their construction. And there were many minor specialists with each of these categories. The “body-makers” produced the body or vehicle itself, while the “carriage-makers” made the stronger timbers beneath and around the body. The timbers used included ash, beech, elm, oak, mahogany, cedar, pine, birch and larch. The tools and processes used were similar to those used in cabinet-making, plus other specific to coach-making. Making the curved woodwork alone called for considerable skill. Making the iron axles, springs and other metal used was the work of the “coach-smith,” one of the most highly paid classes of London workmen. ^[3] The coating of the interior of the coach with leather and painting, trimming, and decorating the exterior called for specialist tradesmen with a high degree of skill. Building carts and wagons required similar skills, but of a coarser kind.

Automobiles

From the beginning of the automobile industry manufacturers offered complete cars assembled in their own factories commonly using entire bodies made by specialist people using different skills. Soon after the start of the twentieth century mass production coachbuilders developed such as Mulliners or Pressed Steel in Great Britain, Fisher Body, Budd, Briggs in the U. S., or Ambi-Budd in Germany. Many other big businesses remain involved.

Specialist market sector

There remained a market for bodies to fit low production, short-run and luxury cars. Custom or bespoke bodies were made and fitted to another manufacturer's rolling chassis by the craftsmen who had previously built bodies for horse-drawn carriages. Bespoke bodies are made of hand-shaped sheet metal, often aluminum alloy. Pressed or hand-shaped the metal panels were fastened to a wooden frame of particularly light but strong types of wood. Later many of the more important structural features of the bespoke or custom body such as A, B and C pillars were cast alloy components. Some bodies such as those entirely alloy bodies fitted to some Pierce-Arrow cars ^[4] contained little or no wood, and were mounted on a conventional steel chassis.

The car manufacturer would offer for sale a chassis frame, drivetrain (consisting of an engine, gearbox, differential, axles, and wheels), brakes, suspension, steering system, lighting system, spare wheel(s), front and rear mudguards (vulnerable and so made of pressed steel for strength and easy repair) and (later) bumpers, scuttle (firewall) and dashboard. The very easily damaged honeycomb radiator, later enclosed and protected by a shell or even reduced to an air intake, was or held the visual element identifying the chassis' brand. To let car manufacturers maintain some level of control over the final product their warranties could be voided if coachbuilders fitted unapproved bodies.

As well as bespoke bodies the same coachbuilders also made short runs of more-or-less identical bodies to the order of dealers or the manufacturer of a chassis. The same body design might then be adjusted to suit different brands of chassis. Examples include Salmons & Sons' Tickford bodies with a patent device to raise or lower a convertible's roof, first used on their 19th-century carriages, or Wingham convertible bodies by Martin Walter.

Ultra-luxury vehicles

Larger car dealers or distributors would commonly preorder stock chassis and the bodies they thought most likely to sell and order them for sale off their showroom floor.

All luxury vehicles during the automobile's Golden Era before World War II were available as chassis only. For example, when Duesenberg introduced their Model J, it was offered as chassis only, for $8,500. Other examples include the Bugatti Type 57, Cadillac V-16, Packard Twelve, Ferrari 250, Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8, Hispano-Suiza J12, and all Rolls-Royces produced before World War II. Delahaye had no in-house coachworks, so all its chassis were bodied by independents, who created their designs on the Type 135. For the Delahaye, most were bodied by Chapron, Labourdette, Franay, Saoutchik, Figoni et Falaschi, or Pennock.^{[ citation needed ]}

The practice continued after World War II waning dramatically in the 1950s and 1960s. Rolls-Royce debuted its first unibody model, their Silver Shadow, in 1965.

Unibody construction

Independent coachbuilders survived for a time after the mid-20th century, making bodies for the chassis produced by low-production companies such as Rolls-Royce, Ferrari, and Bentley. ^[5] Producing body dies is extremely expensive (a single door die can run to US$40,000), which is usually only considered practical when large numbers are involved—though that was the path taken by Rolls-Royce and Bentley after 1945 for their own in-house production. Because dies for pressing metal panels are so costly, from the mid 20th century, many vehicles, most notably the Chevrolet Corvette, were clothed with large panels of fiberglass-reinforced resin, which only require inexpensive molds. Glass has since been replaced by more sophisticated materials, if necessary hand-formed. Generally, these replace metal only where weight is of paramount importance.

The advent of unibody construction, where the car body is unified with and structurally integral to the chassis, made custom coachbuilding uneconomic. Many coachbuilders closed down, were bought by manufacturers, or changed their core business to other activities:

• Transforming into dedicated design or styling houses, subcontracting to automotive brands (e.g. Zagato, Frua, Bertone, Pininfarina)
• Transforming into general coachwork series manufacturers, subcontracting to automotive brands (e.g. Karmann, Bertone, Vignale, Pininfarina)
• Manufacturing runs of special coachworks for trucks, delivery vans, touring cars, ambulances, fire engines, public transport vehicles, etc. (e.g., Pennock, Van Hool, Plaxton, Heuliez)
• Becoming technical partners for the development of roof constructions (e.g., Karmann, Heuliez), for example, or producers of various (aftermarket) automotive parts (e.g., Giannini)

Gallery

• 
  Pourtout drophead coupé on a Lancia Belna chassis 1935
• 
  Touring 2-seater body on a 1938 Alfa Romeo 6C 2300B chassis
• 
  Fixed head coupé by Ghia 1954 on an Alfa Romeo 1900 SS chassis
• 
  Hebmüller Cabriolet modifications upon a mass-produced Volkswagen platform chassis

List of automobile coachbuilders

See also

• Bus manufacturing
• Carriage
• Body-on-frame
• Chassis
• Unibody
• Wainwright

Notes

Related Research Articles

Vanden Plas is the name of coachbuilders who produced bodies for specialist and up-market automobile manufacturers. Latterly the name became a top-end luxury model designation for cars from subsidiaries of British Leyland and the Rover Group, being last used in 2009 to denote the top-luxury version of the Jaguar XJ (X350).

H. J. Mulliner & Co. was a well-known British coachbuilder operating from Bedford Park, Chiswick, West London. The company which owned it was formed by H J Mulliner in 1897 but the business was a continuing branch of a family business founded in Northampton in the 1760s to hire out carriages. In December 1909 the controlling interest in this company passed to John Croall & Sons of Edinburgh. Croall sold that interest to Rolls-Royce in 1959.

Body-on-frame is a traditional motor vehicle construction method whereby a separate body or coach is mounted on a strong and relatively rigid vehicle frame or chassis that carries the powertrain and to which the wheels and their suspension, brakes, and steering are mounted. Whereas this was the original method of building automobiles, body-on-frame construction is now used mainly for pickup trucks, large SUVs, and heavy trucks.

The Bentley R Type is the second series of post-war Bentley automobiles, produced from 1952 to 1955 as the successor the Mark VI. Essentially a larger-boot version of the Mk VI, the R type is regarded by some as a stop-gap before the introduction of the S series cars in 1955. As with its predecessor, a standard body was available as well as coachbuilt versions by firms including H. J. Mulliner & Co., Park Ward, Harold Radford, Freestone and Webb, Carrosserie Worblaufen and others.

Park Ward was a British coachbuilder founded in 1919 which operated from Willesden in North London. In the 1930s, backed by Rolls-Royce Limited, it made technical advances which enabled the building of all-steel bodies to Rolls-Royce's high standards. Bought by Rolls-Royce in 1939, it merged with H. J. Mulliner & Co. in 1961 to form Mulliner Park Ward.

Abbey Coachworks Limited was a British coachbuilding business based in Merton, South West London and later Acton, North West London. It was active between 1930 and 1938.

The Lancia Artena is a passenger car produced by Italian car manufacturer Lancia from 1931 until 1936, and from 1940 until 1942 chiefly for army and government use. It was powered by a 2-litre Lancia V4 engine, while chassis and factory bodies were shared with the more luxurious 2.6-litre V8-engined Lancia Astura. Total production amounted to 5,567 examples.

Carrosserie Pourtout was a French coachbuilding company. Founded by Marcel Pourtout in 1925, the firm is best known for its work in the decades prior to World War II, when it created distinctive and prestigious bodies for cars from numerous European manufacturers. Pre-war Pourtout bodies were mainly one-off, bespoke creations, typically aerodynamic and sporting in character. Together with chief coach designer and stylist Georges Paulin from 1933 to 1938, Pourtout pioneered the Paulin invented 'Eclipse' retractable hardtop system on four models of Peugeot, several Lancia Belna's and other car makes.
Among the company's customers was Georges Clemenceau, the physician and journalist who served as the prime minister of France from 1906 to 1909 and 1917 to 1920.

Gustave Adolphe Clément, known from 1909 Clément-Bayard, was a French entrepreneur. Despite being orphaned, he became a blacksmith and a Compagnon du Tour de France. He later ventured into racing and manufacturing bicycles, pneumatic tyres, motorcycles, automobiles, aeroplanes and airships.

Saoutchik was a French coachbuilding company founded in 1906 and based in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris. The company was one of the best-known coachbuilders in France in the 1920s and 1930s and, together with Figoni et Falaschi and Franay, is considered one of the most important representatives of the "Baroque" style in French coachwork in the 1930s and 1940s.

Carrosserie Hermann Graber, simply known as Graber was a Swiss coachbuilder based in Wichtrach. Between 1927 and 1970 the firm supplied coach-built bodies for fitting on the chassis of various European and US auto-makers. Graber had a particularly close relationship with the British firm of Alvis, providing the manufacturer with bespoke and elegant if expensive bodies for almost twenty years, mostly during the 1950s and 1960s.

A rolling chassis is the fully-assembled chassis of a motor vehicle without its bodywork. It is equipped with running gear and ready for delivery to a coachbuilder to be completed. Historically, bespoke luxury automobiles were finished inside and out to an owner's specifications by a coachbuilder, and specialty vehicles were outfitted by firms devoted to that task.

Figoni et Falaschi is a French luxury brand and coachbuilder firm which was active from 1935 through to the 1950s. The designs were created by Giuseppe Figoni, while his partner Ovidio Falaschi ran the business.

Carrosserie Vanvooren was a French Coachbuilder based in the north-western Paris suburb of Courbevoie. The company concentrated on producing car bodies for luxury cars, being closely associated, during the 1930s, with the products of Hispano-Suiza, Bugatti, Rolls-Royce and Bentley.

Letourneur & Marchand, located in the prosperous Paris suburb Neuilly-sur-Seine, was a car body manufacturing business which became one of the last French coachbuilders.

Carrosserie Clément-Rothschild produced a series of Clément-Rothschild bodied automobiles in 1902, based on the Panhard-Levassor 7 hp chassis.

Arthur Mulliner was the 20th century name of a coachbuilding business founded in Northampton in 1760 which remained in family ownership. The business was acquired by Henlys Limited in 1940 and lost its separate identity.

Franay was a French coachbuilder operating at Levallois-Perret, a suburb on the prosperous north-western edge of Paris. The company was founded in 1903 by Jean-Baptiste Franay, a carriage upholsterer, following an apprenticeship with Binder. It was later taken over by his son, Marius. Franay car body production stopped in late 1955.

Antem Carrossier was a French coachbuilding company that, in the period between the world wars and a short time afterwards, produced one-off bodies for luxury car chassis, as well as some bodies in small series production.

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Coachbuilders .

• Coachbuild.com: Encyclopedia of worldwide Coachbuilders from past to present
• Encyclopedia of American Coachbuilders
• Goldarths: The Fine Art of Coachbuilding
• The Kellner Affair: Matters of Life and Death by Peter M. Larsen and Ben Erickson. Details Jacques Kellner and George Paulin involvement in the French Resistance.
• Wheelchair Accessible Vehicles - Southern Mobility Vehicles