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 We
are therefore not surprised to see the B.N.C. marque at
Le Mans in 1928, and the 1100c.c. car of Michel Doré
and Jean Treunet not only won its class but finished seventh
overall in such exalted company; it was to be the make's
best result in the famous race. A year later, three B.N.C.s
came to the start but all retired, two early on and the
third on the 88th lap. This latter car differed from the
'standard' 527s for it was one of three 4-seater tourers
made with vertical radiators and powered, interestingly,
by the then popular Meadows 4ED 1500c.c. four-cylinder motor,
built by Henry Meadows at Wolverhampton, and used to good
effect in endurance racing by T.T. winner Lea-Francis.
In the meantime,
Lucien Bollack had left the company to set up a business
importing American Lycoming engines - a fashion for large-engined
cars was ill-fatedly sweeping across Europe - and B.N.C.
was bought by an entrepreneur Charles de Ricou who lost
no time in acquiring the failing Lombard sports car company.
He continued to produce a few more of their twin-o.h.c.
sports cars, even putting B.N.C. radiators on them and palming
them off as B.N.C.s!
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One
such car, registration number 33 37 RD1, represented B.N.C.
at Le Mans in 1931 and 1932 but disqualification resulted
in the former race through early re-fuelling while the motor
cried enough as early as the ninth lap in the latter. Our
'proper' B.N.C.s appeared one for each year in 1933-35, scoring
eleventh and then twenty-first overall twice to complete the
marque's history at Le Mans. In its last appearance at the
Sarthe circuit, the little car was dressed up with some streamlined
cowlings, reflecting the increasing trend by the mid-thirties
to move away from the more vintage concepts.
But B.N.C. had
been in trouble before this. De Ricou had bought the rights
to the A.E.R. pneumatic suspension and snatched up what was
left of Rolland-Pilain, but the great depression had set in
at the turn of the decade and B.N.C. like so many firms from
Bentley downwards succumbed to the economic crisis. A temporary
lifeline was offered by racing driver and B.N.C. agent André
Siréjols who bought up what remained and assembled
a few cars up to 1939 but after this B.N.C. was no more.
A final thought
- one of the body styles available was the Saint-Hubert two-seater,
named after the first Bishop of Liège in the early
eighth century. Just imagine driving around in a sporting
car named after a saint! How very civilised and, yes, I do
love those B.N.C.s!
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| This beautifully restored
machine was one of the many delights at Retromobile this year
- Ed |
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I
just love those B.N.C.s, the small French sports cars from
the late twenties which, with their sloping radiators, look
so racy. Were I a young man at that time, I would surely have
craved one so now I do the next best thing and order some
of the new offerings from SLM 43 to fill a gap in my extensive
Le Mans collection. So where did the real ones come from?
The early nineteen-twenties
were something of a golden age in motoring history. Prior
to 1914 motoring had on the whole been the preserve of the
well-to-do but the onslaught of the Great War changed that,
chiefly in two respects. First, the factories were quickly
adapted to the intense production of munitions, aero engines,
vehicles etc, while all the time developing improved technical
techniques. When the war was finally over, the demand for
military materials declined rapidly, leaving the factories
with over-capacity while retaining the know-how to produce
much improved machines.
Secondly, the mechanised
transport that became such a feature of the conduct of the
war brought a large number of people into contact with motor
vehicles for the first time, and these members of the forces
quickly became acquainted with the technicalities of the internal
combustion engine, finding themselves having to repair them
etc. The effect of this was a strong desire to become motorised
once the hostilities ceased.
A huge surge of
demand therefore characterised the early 1920s, giving rise
particularly in the immediate post-war austerity to the emergence
of cheap and comparatively simple cyclecars, especially in
France. But not just these as the overall enthusiasm seemed
boundless. All sorts of little companies sprang up to make
motor cars, using proprietary parts on a wide scale and France
alone had over 350 makes of car at that time, some eighty
per cent of them made in and around Paris!
This was the world
from which emerged the B.N.C. whose origins were a design
by Jacques Muller who sold out to the Bollack brothers and
the banker René Netter.
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They re-named the business Bollack
Netter et Cie and started marketing touring cars, sporting
cars and delivery vans using the SCAP side-valve and Ruby
o.h.v. engines. These vehicles were, further more, exported
successfully, especially to Belgium and Spain.
One should mention
at this point that this was, not surprisingly, a golden era
for the makers of proprietary engines, and the most successful
included SCAP, Ruby, CIME and Chapuis-Dornier. We find B.N.C.s
powered by some of these better known units, as were so many
of their French rivals.
At the Brussels
Salon in November 1925 - there was no Paris Motor Show that
year - B.N.C. introduced a more serious range of sports cars
with 1100c.c. SCAP and Ruby engines - in fact the 1097c.c.
Ruby K motor gave 60b.h.p. and was good for 100m.p.h. in a
B.N.C. chassis. Also B.N.C. announced a Cozette-supercharged
version of the SCAP-engined model, this thought to be the
first catalogued French supercharged car.
The range of sports
models were named after circuits where the marque had had
successes, the supercharged short chassis being the Montlhéry,
the non-supercharged short chassis the Monza and the long
chassis the Miramas.
However, it was
in 1927 that the familiar model of the marque, the Type 527,
was introduced with the rakish sloping radiator and underslung
chassis, giving a very sporting low appearance, although 4-door
saloons were still made with vertical radiators. These lowered
2-seater 527s quickly put their stamp on the competition world,
taking first and second in the Bol d'Or in 1927 and coming
second overall (and first in the 1100c.c. class) in that year's
Paris 24-hour race at Montlhéry, the overall winner
being Buff and Clement's 4Ê-litre Bentley, the first victory
for this particular model after its début at Le Mans.
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