Renault Voiturette
A Voiturette (French, about small car) is a lightweight and often sporty automobile blank. The term was first used in 1895 by Léon Bollée for its sporty, two-seater tricycles. This vehicle category enjoyed until the 1920s some popularity, but they also allowed populations motorization, which otherwise had no access to expensive automobile. Voiturettes were lighter built as small cars such as the Opel Tree Frog, Renault NN or Austin 7 and were increasingly a sporty alternative to these. The even lighter and smaller cyclecars came up from about 1912, saying rather far motorcyclists. Unlike many cyclecars voiturette have no "tandem" seat arrangement with two people in a row.
The construction types were very diverse. A common denominator was the lightweight design. Usually (but not always) been used one or two-cylinder engines. In the early 20th century the single-cylinder De Dion-Voiturettes the company Bouton, Renault or sporting Sizaire-Naudin were very popular. The then largest carmaker in the world, De Dion-Bouton, supplied approximately 150 car manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. with its engines. Most were in Voiturette installed.
The first car of the Adlerwerke was also a Voiturette. It had a then very progressive front-mounted engine, the drive of the rear wheels was through a propeller shaft. The Voiturette A was the first built in the Skoda automobile. The Eisenach car factory (later automobile plant in Eisenach) started her car production under license of a French Voiturette, the Wartburg Motorwagen.
After the First World War, the automobile quickly won back the public’s interest. Now the cars of Bugatti sports car modeled from brands such as Amilcar, Hotchkiss, Salmson, Sénéchal, BNC came or rally in fashion. Such vehicles contributed amazing and took to the hardest reliability runs like the 24-hour race at Le Mans. The previous series of Formula 2 was the Voiturette series before the Second World War. For the first time driven on the occasion of the race at the Paris-Dieppe on July 24, 1897 also be a Grand Prize for Voiturettes (distance 171km).
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