1935 Amilcar Type G36 Pegasé Boattail Roadster
1935 Amilcar Type G36 Pegasé Boattail Roadster in the style of Figoni et Falaschi
During the 1930’s, the Amilcar shifted offerings from sporty cars to large, multi-passenger vehicles. The Amilcar Pegase, though, retained the sporting heritage of the company. In 1937, a Pegase was entered into the prestigious LeMans endurance race. Mme. Roux, the wife of a wealthy Parisian surgeon, began racing a Pegase in 1936. She entered various races including the Marne Grand Prix and the Grand Prix de France. She later purchased an Amilcar Grand Prix car powered by a 2.5 liter Delahaye engine. It was entered in the 1938 Le Mans race.
This 1935 Amilcar Pegase Grand Prix Roadster is the only surviving car of the Pegase series designed by the Fagoni it Falaschi designer, Geo Hamm. Power was supplied by a eight cylinder engine, designed by Delahaye ‘Grillot’ – one of only eight ever built.
Amilcar built its reputation on small runabouts and racing cars in the 1920s. They moved upmarket in the early 1930s with the Pegase Roadster, whose design is attributed to Figoni and Falaschi. Due to the expanding world-wide depression, very few cars were built.
The first Amilcar was produced in 1921 with a four-cylinder engine and door-less, two-seater torpedo bodies. The brand offered increasingly sporty cars and entered automobile racing in the mid-1920s with a group of supercharged dual overhead cam six-cylinder cars. In the late 1920s, the line was expanded further with the introduction of a light touring car. The company merged with Hotchkiss in 1937 but stopped production in 1939 with the outbreak of war. It never resumed production.
The Societe’ Nouvelle pour l’Automobile was founded in 1920 in the Paris suburb of Saint Denis to ‘make sporting voiturettes’, or small cars. Together with Salmson, the Amilcar was the quintessential French small car of the 1920’s. Amilcar was the amalgam of the two bakers’ names; Joseph Lamy and Emile Akar. The first car was designed by Edmond Moyer who worked for Citroen. Production of automobiles was always limited in number and in the late-1930’s, the French company was taken over by Hotchkiss. The Amilcar was gone after 1930.
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Every now and then a car like this pristine 1935 Amilcar Type G36 Boattail Roadster comes up for auction with an estimated hammer price below the value of my house. This causes no small amount of consternation for me as I begin the process of convincing the 6 year old boy who still lives in my brain that I actually do need things like linen closets, mantlepieces and guest bedrooms, and that living in a car, even one as stunning as this, isn’t really feasible in the longer term.
