The valveless CID, not by Knight.

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This is nthe first of a new series by Fons Alkemade, who on a regular basis will share his knowledge about the most obscure products of the French car industry:

"At the recent Beaulieu Autojumble I bought a rather obscure brochure from 1912 of the “valveless” automobile offered by the Constructions Industrielles Dijonnaises or CID (erroneously some authors think the C is for Compagnie). CID is not completely unknown in the history of French car manufacturers. It was the successor to the better known Cottereau.

Louis Cottereau was a cycle champion in the 1890s and started making his own bicycles in 1891 in Dijon. In 1898 the Cottereau brothers also started making cars and for the coming eight years or so their voitures légères sold quite well. But around 1906 they wanted to enter the market of bigger and more luxurious models. Alas, these models would never become popular and presumably this led to a takeover of the company by the CID company in 1911 (although CID is already mentioned in a Cottereau ad of the early 1900s so this may have been just a change of company name). CID was quite successful with a tiny cyclecar-like twoseater, called the Baby (also known as the Emeraude). Some of them have survived. But like Cottereau CID had big plans to enter other segments of the market. Enters the 12 HP valveless model. The brochure, which surprisingly is in English, shows sketches of the engine construction with rotating sleeves (apparently the Cottereau system was not based on the Knight licence). One wonders whether more than a handful of these cars has ever been sold (and it is even more unlikely that any was imported into the UK) but the fact is that CID went out of production in 1914.    

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