Facel Vega
The marriage of V8 American engines built into European chassis and styling is nothing new. Iso and Bizzarini, AC Cobra, Jensen and so on. The Facel company (Forges et Ateliers de Construction d'Eure et de loire SA) had beenbuilding aircraft components and post war building bodies for Simca, Ford and Panhard. In 1954 Jean Daninos decided to make his own cars. These were to be high quality sturdy 2+2 Grand Tourers with terrific performance. Initial DeSoto engines gave way to Chrysler, and as Chrysler developed their engines so Daninos offerings grew in output from 180bhp in 1954 to 6 litre 360bhp by 1958 which is what was in their best selling HK500 that was in production until 1962, Then it was replaced with the phenomenal and luxurious 6.3 litre 390bhp Facel II which was produced until the company stopped in 1964. Meanwhile work had been going on with the smaller Facellia with French built 1600cc 4 cylinder twin cam offered in the Facellia. There was a demand for a smaller Facel and between 1960 to 1962 some 1200 Facelias were sold. But some dissatisfaction with the engine led to fitting the 1780cc Volvo engine in the Facel III in 1963, later replaced with the 3 litre Healey engine in the Facel 6. These engines eliminated the teething problems but it was too late and shortly after the forced resignation of Daninos toward the end of 1961, the company closed its doors in 1964.
