Behind the wheels

Photos: Richard Greene

Robert Massengale shows off the 1948 Delahaye 135M Chapron he restored for its owner, Ray Kinney. Massengale is a top choice among area collectors to help get their classics operating like new.

A TRUE FRENCH CLASSIC

Robert Massengale restored this 1948 Delahaye to near-perfect shape • By Richard Greene

Ray Kinney’s 1948 Delahaye 135M Chapron was almost choice among area collectors of amazing cars. There doesn’t fawless. It just needed the skills of master craftsman seem to be any challenge he can’t meet. He fnds the parts he Robert Massengale to get it running perfectly. needs for almost anything that comes his way.

That meant the three carburetors would have When something is so rare that there’s to be rebuilt and synchronized, the brakes were simply nothing available anywhere, he uses his locking up and that needed to be corrected, a fabrication skills and machines from scratch bent shaft in the starter had to be straightened, whatever is required to produce solutions to it was past time for the 17-year-old tires to be almost any mechanical problem or bodywork for replaced, so were the battery cables, and then full just about everything that comes his way. lubrication for the gear box and rear axle along The greater the challenge, the more motivated with oil, coolant, and grease fttings. he becomes in solving it. A visit to his shop

So, Robert could then greet the car’s owner provides an opportunity to see some work in with, “Take a look, perfection has been achieved!” progress and, for someone like me, it’s an observation that

Robert’s highly developed talents have made him a top produces a response of, “Wow – how do you do that!?” >>>

This amazing classic was designed by French automobile coachbuilder, Henri Chapron, who had developed custom body designs beginning in the 1920s that included special presidential models for the governments of Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou.

Those were four-door convertibles frst used for the visit of Queen Elizabeth II to France and continued through the inauguration of Jacques Chirac in 1995, long after Chapron’s death in 1978. The Delahaye 135 heritage includes winning the Monte Carlo rally in 1937 and the grueling 24 Hours of Le Mans the following year. Two more Delahayes came in second and fourth that year, and a year later, they fnished frst, second and fourth.

Twelve years later, the frst ever Australian Grand Prix, staged over 35 laps of the race track laid out on the runways of a World War II airbase, was run a distance of 150.5 miles. Aussie racing hero John Crouch was in control of the open wheel version of the Delahaye on that occasion and piloted it to a frst-place win in just an hour and 49 minutes.

So, the provenance that comes with Kinney’s Delahaye spans three-quarters of a century. Owning one of these classics puts you in rare company and assures the admiration of collectors the world over.

Also known as “Coupe des Alpes” after its success in the Alpine Rally, the Delahaye 135 was frst presented in 1935 following the auto maker’s decision to build sportier cars.

Innovations included independent, leaf-sprung front suspension, a live real axle, cable-operated Bendix brakes, 17-inch spoked wheels and a partially synchronized four-speed manual transmission.

Take a look at the shifter on the dashboard and you can imagine the engineering that developed the technology to move the car through the gears with a little more than a nudge of the handy chrome knob.

It is powered by a formidable inline, 6-cylinder engine with those three carburetors producing about 140 horsepower.

The prestigious Classic Driver website recently featured one of these cars and summed it up, “Delahayes have always been remarkable automobiles. They are interesting, quick, easy to control, and astonishing to look at.”

No one would challenge that conclusion because it’s all so very true.

As this collection of photos shows, this classic vehicle is marked by elite craftsmanship that makes it one of the world’s automotive treasures.