Talbot Lago T26 Record GS Coupe by Barou
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Car producer : |
Talbot Lago |
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Model: |
T26 Record GS Coupe by Barou |
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Year: |
1947-1953 |
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Type: |
Coupe |
part of the backwash from the bankruptcy and break-up of the Anglo-French Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq combine in 1935, the French part of the business was purchased by Tony Lago, an auto-industry entrepreneur and engineer born in Venice, but who had built much of his auto-industry career during the 1920s in England. The registered name of the company Lago now owned was "Automobiles Talbot-Darracq S.A.", but in the English speaking world it is generally known as "Talbot-Lago". The cars themselves were badged in their home market simply as Talbots, using the badge worn by products of the predecessor company since 1922 (when the "-Darracq" suffix had been dropped from the names used for the cars in France). Nevertheless, after 1945, sources even in France frequently used some form the "Talbot-Lago" name combination.
After acquiring the company in 1935, Lago rapidly developed a range of executive and sporting cars with engine sizes ranging from 2.3 to 4.0 litres. The passenger car range was complemented by racing cars and a high profile motor racing programme. The Talbot Lago-Record Type T26 launched in 1946, relatively quickly after the end of the war, closely resembled models from the 1930s such as the Talbot Major and Talbot Baby and benefited from the reputation Talbots had built up in the prewar years, though the economic conditions made it unrealistic to produce the range of standard and special-bodied Talbots that had been a feature of the previous decade. The company's
star engineer, Walter Becchia, transferred to Citroen at the start of the war, but Tony Lago was joined in 1942 by another exceptional engineering talent, Carlo Machetti, and from then the two of them were working on the twin-camshaft 4483 cc six-cylinder unit that would lie at the heart of the Talbot T26.
The French government that came to power in 1945 had a strong belief in political control of the economy. In addition to creating a taxation regime which savagely penalized cars with engine sizes above 2 litres, the government also introduced in January 1946 the so-called Pons Plan, under which different French auto-makers were told by government what car types they might build. Since government also controlled materials supplies – notably steel supplies – the Pons Plan could not be ignored. Talbot were not forbidden to build cars, but they, along with Hotchkiss and Delahaye-Deage were restricted to a class entitled by the bureaucrats "véhicules de classe exceptionnelle" – high-class vehicles. Plan implementation was at its most rigid in 1946, and in that year Talbot received government authorisation for the construction of an initial batch of 125 cars, provided the cars were exported.
The Talbot Lago-Record Type T26 was first presented in public in 1946.
In 1951, as rumors of the company’s financial difficulties intensified, a new Ponton format body appeared for the Talbot Baby and Record. The wheelbases were carried over from the earlier models. Although in many ways strikingly modern, the new car featured a two piece front windscreen in place of the single flat screen of its predecessor, presumably reflecting the difficulties at the time of combining the strength of a windscreen with curved glass at an acceptable price and quality. The new car’s large rear window was itself replaced by a larger three-piece “panoramic” wrap around back window as part of the car’s first face-lift, which took place in time for the 1952 Paris Motor Show. The engine specification of the four-cylinder unit was unchanged as was the claimed performance even though the new body was some 100 kg heavier than the old. A new development with the Ponton-bodied cars body was the availability of the larger six-cylinder unit from the Talbot Record in the top of the line Talbot Baby, which in this form was called the Talbot Baby/6 Luxe, and had the slightly longer wheel-base and overall length enforced by the greater length of the six-cylinder engine.
