A FINAL FLOURISH

Holding on as the last bastion of French automotive aristocracy, Talbot-Lago's T26 Grand Sport Lago was a proud dream of post-war glory

- MARTIN BUCKLEY

Final flings are always F interesting. Be it a case of 'what if' or simply 'why bother?', they generally make painful but very compelling reading especially when events take a lurid turn. Lipstick was smeared on to quite a few automotive pigs in the 1950s, in an effort (last-ditch or otherwise) to make them relevant in the face of cheaper, faster and more modern postwar competition. But the great grand routier marques of France at least faded from the scene with their dignity largely intact.

With no money for new models, and little buyer appetite for their existing products, Delage, Delahaye and Hotchkiss had all gone by the mid-'50s, and even Bugatti's post-war revival amounted to just seven cars, so hardly counts. Talbot-Lago was left as the last producer of large-engined, luxury machines for a domestic car trade that the French government appeared determined to legislate out of business.

First, in 1946, came the Plan Pons, a means by which the government decreed what type of cars and how many - each of the nation's 22 manufacturers could produce. As a maker of rarefied classe exceptionelle machinery, TalbotLago was only allocated enough raw materials to make 125 of its new T26 Record models in 1946, all supposedly for export. In fact, about 45 cars stayed in France, where petrol was still rationed, even tyres were hard to come by and buyers had to apply for a Purchase Tax permit.