A car company which started in 1805 ?!?

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Yesterday the bicentenary celebrations of the prestigious Belgian coachbuilding firm D'Ieteren. We want to express a fullhearted Congratulations !! Very few companies in the car industry - probably this is the only one in the world - started before 1886, which is still in bussiness. It was in 1805 that Jean Joseph D'Ieteren started a shop as a wheelright. It must have been a brilliant craftsman, as soon the small company developed into a succesfull coachbuilding firm with Dutch & Belgian Royalty as clients. No surprise they forged the change from 'hippomobile to automobile' (expression of Roland D'Ieteren) to their own benefit and fame. From 1897 to 1935 the firm built something like 6000 custom high quality coachworks for chassis from Hispano-Suiza, Minerva, Mercedes-Benz and Bugatti. Hélas, maybe 30-40 of those magnificent cars have survived. The first coachwork they made in 1897 was for an electric city car and was commissioned by nobody less then racing driver Camille Jenazky (clic). This in fact was a prototype for the cars Jenazky produced in Paris from 1898. When the market for splendid coachworks collapsed in the early thirties, D'Ieteren again managed to remould the problem into an opportunity. They started to import US-made quality cars: Auburn, Pierce-Arrow and Studebaker and evolved once more into a very healthy multinational company. An testimony of the strenght and flexibility of the company. Untill this very day. Our birthday gift to D'Ieteren is that we offer our help to track down more specimen of the surviving D'Ieteren coachworks. You can inform the company by yourself or write to [email protected]. (archive photos courtesy D'Ieteren; coachwork number #3981 belongs to the 1928 Mercedes-Benz 6,8 Litre Transformable Sports (clic photo) that now resides in the collection of D'Ieteren)

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