While crawling through city traffic on a rather dreadful and sun-less weekday morning, something caught my eye. Something grey, small and slippery. Something highly unusual. What on earth is that?
From that distance, my first guess was an Alfa Romeo Giulietta Sprint Speciale. Quite the rare bird! And sharing the street with all the other commuters, what a nice treat to lighten up one’s day!
But when I come closer, I wasn’t so sure anymore that I was really looking at an Alfa. The taillights were different from the ones on the SS’s, as was the rear window. Maybe an obscure spin-off of the Alfa, done by some Italian coachbuilder? Zagato, maybe, as there was a hint of „double-bubble“ in the roofline?
Or maybe something completely different … up close, I finally could read the sign on the trunk. And oh yes, it was something completely different indeed: a Panhard!
And if seeing any Panhard in traffic would not in itself be close to a miracle, it was probably the rarest Panhard of them all: the high-tech, race-bred Panhard CD. One of only 179 that were built between 1962 and 1965. As I wasn’t able to catch a picture from the front, here is one I found on the Internet (judging from the vintage Dutch numberplate, the very same car):
The Panhard CD apparently was conceived not as a Panhard, but a child of a company called DB, a cooperation of French engineers Charles Deutsch (hence the “D”) and René Bonnet (thus the “B”). Situated close to Paris, DB had been making racing cars in a very low volume, starting in the mid 1930’s. After WW II, DB began to also offer sports cars intended for road use, whiles still pursuing their racing activities.
While at the beginning, DB cars seemed to employ components from various manufacturers, it was Panhard sourced parts they became to rely on more heavily as the 1950’s progressed. The flat-twin Panhard engines of the day were very amenable to tuning measures and their low and compact design apparently was a good fit to DB’s philosophy focusing on aerodynamics rather than on brute strength. The outcome looked like this beautiful 1959 DB HRB5 (somebody complain about the numeric potpourri found on the trunklid of today’s cars!), whose picture I found on the Internet.
As the cooperation with Panhard deepened, Deutsch and Bonnet’s internal conflicts on the direction of their engineering apparently deepened as well – Deutsch wanted to keep up the relation with Panhard and thus the „traction avant“ guise of the cars, while Bonnet wanted to move on to build rear engined cars with more power, something Panhard couldn’t really provide. In the early 1960’s, this let to the two splitting up and closing down DB. Monsieur Bonnet went on to found his own company aptly named „René Bonnet“, creating the Djet, which used Renault-sourced parts in a mid-engine configuration.
In 1964 already, the company René Bonnet was in financial turmoil and bought out by French aerospace and defense manufacturer Matra. Soon, they went on using the Matra moniker on their cars, giving the world the strangely beautiful and clever Matra 530 (curiously named after an air-to-air missile built by Matra) as a follow-up to the Djet and not very much later ending up along with Simca in the big pile of trouble that was Chrysler Europe.
But back to the end of the company that was called DB: when splitting up, Charles Deutsch decided not only to keep its ties with Panhard, but to join them altogether. Along with him, he took a car almost ready for production, which was to carry his own name: the CD (as in Charles Deutsch, obviously – not the most humble of personalities, these guys appear to have been …).
The CD is a highly unusual and very French concoction: the body is made from fiberglass, resulting in a feather-light curb weight of only 620kg (1350lbs). It is powered by Panhard’s “Tigre” motor, a high-revving flat-twin with a capacity of only 851ccm, putting out 60hp, which propelled the CD to a – for the time – very respectable 180km/h (110mph) and even more in racing guise. If the numbers in Panhard’s brochure below are to be believed, it sports a drag coefficient of 0,13 CD („cx“ in French – which is, yes, the reason and source of another very clever French car’s name, but that story needs to be told another time), which appears almost too good to be true, as today’s cars like the Mercedes CLA proud themselves to have a supposedly extremely low drag coefficient of 0,22 cw.
(Editor’s note: Other sources cite a CD of o.22 for the Panhard CD, but do cite a CD of 0.13 for the 1964 DB LeMans prototype (blue car), which could hit 140 mph on the Mulsanne Straight with supercharged version of the 848 cc flat twin. The 0.13 CD cited in the brochure for the CD coupe is not credible. Maybe they got their numbers mixed up)
Overall, a most unusual car, for sure. And most beautiful, indeed. So it’s only doing it justice the marketing guys at Panhard did quote Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Grey in their brochure:
„La beauté ne se discute pas. Elle règne de droit divin. Elle fait prince quiconque la possède.”
Or, for those with a lesser French (like me):
“Beauty cannot be questioned. It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it.”
Quite to the point, I think.
That’s quite the beautiful little car. I have never seen one, but I like it and would like to see more of these and other little-known – to me – European cars of any type.
The yellow one above puzzles me; it looks like a hash-up of a Fiero, a Saturn/Olds with that back glass and even has some lines of the Geo sports coupe and ESPECIALLY my favorite – A Buick Reatta!
Either way, I like!
The “double bubble” roof has been a feature of Corvettes, too. Just goes to show there’s nothing new under the sun!
Nice car,the yellow one I’m not to sure about that rear window and the back
Cars has so much more style back then. It almost makes one happy just looking at them. Now that everything is so politicized, cars have to look like kitchen appliances, no fun allowed here!
Thats just fantastic. To see a Panhard in regular traffic would be like seeing a unicorn standing in line at KFC.
Sorry, it looks like a small grey catfish to me.
Priceless..
The Panhard part of the clue I got but the model nar, not something Ive run across before, awesome little car, it has the low drag design the French cant get away from something thats obvious looking at my car.
Lovely cars – I saw a DB at a European car show in Richmond about six years ago. The owner was quiet about the marque, so it had everybody guessing like crazy.
And these cars were the proponents of the wonderfully French “index of performance” trophy at Le Mans, given to the car that could do the most performance with the least specs. And, of course, it was always a French car that won thus insuring that the French got something out of the year’s race.
Except that one year (don’t remember when) a Mini (I think) won the class. And was promptly disqualified on a technicality at the end of the race. French record unsullied.
Ha Ha, they must use Figure Scating judges.
Might have been a Lotus, I remember reading about them having to make some last-minute changes due to different bolt patterns on the front & rear wheels. They had special short-stroke Coventry-Climax engines built for smaller capacity & better IoP rating. Not sure about Minis racing at Le Mans, would that be Monte Carlo?
agreed, that was Rally Monte Carlo, either 1965 or 1966. All Minis were disqualified for rather dodgy reasons and – voila – the winning team drove a Citroen DS!
Great sighting! Although I like the looks of the 24CT better.
I guess the Renault van suggests these photos were not taken in the U.S.
All Dutch plates, I can just see that the black Renault van comes from Nijmegen (Nijm….), the oldest city in the Netherlands. (2000th anniversary in 2005)
Then the plates on the Panhard: DE-17-63
First vehicle registration date: June 30th 1963
First registration in the Netherlands: June 24th 1988
The current owner has had it since this date, so that’s 25 years now.
I’m guessing the author of the post is in the Netherlands?
That Alfa is just gorgeous! Here in the rusty midwest especially by the 70’s, there were no Panhards around anywhere. The only Panhard I was aware of was the suspension component.
I was at the inaugural Pittsburgh Vintage Grand Prix back in the 80’s; that was my first ever encounter with a Deutsch-Bonnet. I thought they were neat little cars, but they looked awfully fragile. Growing up in my part of the country, sports cars were Corvettes, Porsches and maybe a 240/260/280 Z Datsuns/Nissans. That exposure to the D-B opened up a whole new world for me.
Thanks for this little insight!
Amazing find. I think I found some more photos for this exact car on Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/tautaudu02/9315925191/in/set-72157624943895551/
It is absolutely lovely although I must admit the rear looks a little nicer than the front.
Yes; it’s surprising to me that they didn’t use faired-in front headlights, which were of course legal in Europe. It looks like some of the federalized cars of the era….odd.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30661150@N08/7425694564/
Exposed, finned brake drums? Beautiful.
I love that car! I remember seeing one in a copy of the 1964 Auto-World my dad got from the local Ford dealer when he was a teen. Reminds me a LOT of a Citroen DS coupe, at least from the back.
What an unexpectedly pretty car! I’m familiar with the PL-17 sedan, but not with the CD at all. I assume they facelifted them at some stage, as one of the ones on the flickr link has much smaller headlamps:
The small headlights are the original!
The big of a Peugeot 204 being the first halogen lamps on the French market! The small headlights are experimental. The manufacturer is Cibié.
The car weighs 580 kg and the CW value is 0.13!