Did you know that the designer of the Facel Vega, apparently, also had a big hand in the Traction Avant?
In this video produced by ClassicJob, a company in The Netherlands that restores various classic cars to a very high standard, they discuss their effort on a the French made Facel Vega, in this instance a model HK500. They have an interview with Hans Ruhé from Amicale Facel Holland and owner of ClassicJob, who has formed a Facel Vega register and has managed to track 1,400 of the 3,000 cars that the factory produced.
Ruhé says that Jean Daninos the creator of the Facel Vega worked at Citroën on the giant steel presses used for body parts during the initial production of the Traction Avant. (These were the presses that Citroën imported from Budd Automotive in USA to be able to manufacture the Traction efficiently and on large scale). Ruhé goes on to say that by about 1952, Daninos had ideas of building his own Grand Turismo.
Actually, in 1939 Daninos left Citroën and founded Facel SA initially to make components for Bronzavia’s military aircraft. In 1945, in conjunction with Metallon, Facel began to make short-run special bodies, coupés or cabriolets, for Simca, Ford, Panhard and Delahaye. Metallon left the partnership in 1953, and Facel set about designing and making their own complete cars using engines made by Chrysler, Volvo and Austin. Their first design named Vega was shown to the public in 1954.
See the video here:
The video is in Dutch but contains English subtitles.