This is 1 of 300 specially made pieces

Facel S.A. was a French manufacturer of pressed steel automobile components, later complete automobiles of their own design. To intensify its World War II war effort, French subcontracting company for military aeronautics Bronzavia created a subsidiary called Facel (acronym of Forges et Ateliers de Constructions d’Eure-et-Loir) in December 1939. After the war, in 1945, by merging with Mtallon, Facel began to make short-run special bodies, coups or cabriolets for Simca, Ford of France, Panhard and Delahaye. Approximately 2,900 cars of all models were hand-built in Facel’s short life

In 1960, Facel entered the sports car market with the Facellia, with a premiere at the Paris Motor Show in 1959. It was a small car similar in size to the then popular Mercedes 190SL. Facellias were advertised in three body styles: cabriolet, 2+2 coup and 4-seat coup all with the same mechanical parts avriurf fifiend a 2,450 mm (96.5 in) wheelbase. Styling was similar to the Facel HK500, but with rather elegant (though fingernail-breaking) flush door handles. Following Facel Vega’s demise several of M Daninos’s styling cues were “borrowed” by Mercedes-Benz. Prices were roughly US$4,000 for the Facellia ($34,992 in 2020 dollars), US$5,500 for the Facel III ($43,740 in 2020 dollars) and US$6,000 for the Facel 6 ($52,488 in 2020 dollars

With the idea of creating a mass-produced all-French sports car competing with the Alfa Romeo Giulietta, the Triumph TR3 and Porsche 356B, Facel moved away from Chrysler engines because they didn’t offer a four-cylinder engine at the time. Instead, the Facellia had a four-cylinder 1.6 L DOHC engine designed by former Talbot-Lago chief engineer Carlo Machetti, who won at Le Mans, along with the advice of famed English cylinder-head guru Harry Weslake, and built in France by Paul Cavallier of the Pont–Mousson company (which already provided manual gear boxes for the company’s larger models) so as to be compliant with the punitive French horsepower tax system and increase sales. The engine had only two bearings supporting each camshaft, using special steels, as opposed to the usual four or five. Despite the metallurgical experience of Pont–Mousson, this resulted in excessive flex, timing problems and frequent failures. Famed engineers Charles Deutsch and Jean Bertin were called in to solve the issues, but it was not enough and the engine was pronounced a disaster and the Facellia with it. Company president, Jean Daninos having been obliged to resign in August 1961 in response to the company’s financial problems, the new boss, a former oil company executive called Andr Belin, gave strict instructions to the after-sales department to respond to customer complaints about broken Facellia engines by replacing the units free of charge without creating “difficulties”. The strategy was intended to restore confidence among the company’s customer base. It would certainly have created a large hole in the income statement under the “warranty costs” heading, but it may have been too late for customer confidence.