1898 Delahaye Surrey-Top Tourer TYPE 0

1898 Delahaye Surrey-Top Tourer TYPE 0

From the beginning of the production of the DELAHAYE brand, at the end of 1894 in Tours, by Emile DELAHAYE in his workshops at 34, rue du Gazomètre, type 1, a two-cylinder car, will be built, considered as a large car which will evolve in cubic capacity and power, to successively become type 2 and then type 3. On December 30, 1897, Emile DELAHAYE joined forces with Georges MORANE and Léon DESMARAIS, the Emile DELAHAYE et Cie Company was thus created. It is then that new perspectives open up which will have to adapt to competition, in particular that of DE DION-BOUTON. To compete with the latter, a new type of car will be created, The Type 0 was a small light car, powered by a horizontal single cylinder engine of 1099 cm3 still installed at the rear and flat under the chassis, like its predecessors. It will be produced at the end of 1898, evolving gradually until its disappearance during 1901, where at the end of the year all of the brand's models will adopt the Titan engines migrating to the front of the various cars. Type 0 will thus be replaced by type 0A (A for Before). Coinciding with the beginnings of the association, It considered that the first copies of type 0 were assembled on the historic Touraine site, then in parallel on the Paris site of 10 rue du Banquier in the 13th arrondissement. This is how the bronze cabochons on the axles are engraved on the 2 production sites: Tours and Paris. Unfortunately having no production register saved, it was considered around 250 examples of type 0 was produced during approximately three years, end of 1898-end of 1901.

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