Sunday 14th December 1947

French pioneer automotive engineer and manufacturer, Louis Delage (73) died in poverty. Frenchman Louis Delage realized the enormous potential for the automobile and raised enough money to open his own assembly plant in a converted barn in Levallois at the outskirts of Paris in 1905. The stylish road cars sold well and two decades on the Company entered the motor racing scene. In 1927 Robert Benoist won all the major Grands Prix with the superb Delage 15-S-8. Louis Delage’s dream evaporated with the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Company struggled and went into liquidation, the rights to the Delage name auctioned off to the Delahaye car company in 1935. Louis Delage was nearly 60 years old and he found himself too poor to afford a car.