Let's Talk Cyclecars

Love all the louvers but what a pain to paint .

 

'Austin 7 outside the Railway Hotel at Yeppoon, Queensland, circa 1930' - State Library of Queensland

 

'Baby' Austin and baby Ralph at Caboolture, Queensland, 1928 - State Library of Queensland

 

'Hatshorn, Quinn and Jolly families at Thornside, Brisbane, Queensland, circa 1929' - State Library of Queensland

 

'Riley Brooklands car, taken for "Telegraph" classified ads' - Sam Hood photo, State Library of New South Wales

 

'Singer Le Mans Sports Car' - Sam Hood photo; State Library of New South Wales

 

Lurking in the shadows at the left a 1934 Ford. Love the twin exhaust on the Singer Le- Mans

 

What a fantastic way to start the week! What is this Coupe? It was posted on the What is it section of the AACA website. Are there any clones underway? Bob

 

Ooh!
Ooh!
Ooh!
Ooh!
Ooh!
Ooh!
Ooh!
Ooh!
You know what little FHCs do to me!

 

It's not quite close enough to the Elgé, about which I've been trying to find information for years:

 

https://www.ardenneweb.eu/reportages/2012/decouverte_d_une_elge_construction_de_1913
I didn't know this brand, it says it's a Belgian brand that built only 17 cars, if it's not a different manufacturer with the same name.
The car above has a builder/garage French license plate.

 

The radiator surround seems to look a bit like an Amilcar. ???

 

It's taken me the better part of the day to remember FHC is a Fixed Head Coupe.

 

The "classical" radiator seems similar. Chapuis-Dornier engine, I see — though Elgé aren't listed among CD's customers on the Wikipedia page. I wonder if the pic I posted is the only surbaissé example built?

Elgé sounds like a phoneticised acronym. Presumably the L was Lambin: who would the G have been? simply "Garages"?

(Has anyone written a book on the proprietary engines of the pre-WWII era? It's hard to find the relevant information all together in one place.)

 

Doing a reverse image search brings me to a whole slew of similarly styled vehicles, which I really don’t recall seeing much of. It brought me to this vid which was posted here on the HAMB in 2022. Probably one of my top ten looking vehicles.

 

Just doing a search within the pic of the sign/text above the car, yields all kinds of manufacturer plates. Interesting…

 

Possible, the article only talks about Lambin being the founder of the brand, but Elgé is a family name, could it be the name of the person holding the purse if Lambin needed financing?

 

That's just a window sign for a driving school:

Driving school
driver's license package
or per lesson​

Pity it doesn't give a proprietor's name. It's also a shame the camera wasn't a foot to the left or the car wasn't angled out into the street. The reg suffix might have hinted at a location. (The Elgé had a temporary reg indicating it was for sale. Temp regs don't indicate location.)