French Edwardian Cars

These two cars took part in the 4-Lap Handicap Race for Edwardian Cars at the VSCC's Richard Seaman Memorial Trophies meeting at Oulton Park in August 1992.

This car is listed in the programme of the event as Richard Black's 9,500cc 1906/11 Clement Special

This car is listed as John Brydon's 9,000cc 1903/10 CGV Special

A note in the programme about the race says this about the two cars:

 'There are two French cars on the entry list for this race, and both are powered by Simplex T-head side-valve engines of nine litres or more. Richard Black's 1906 Clement and the 1903 CGV (Charron-Giradot-Voigt) of John Brydon are fitted with these American engines because the original units are not available. The CGV has a two-seat Grand Prix-type body modelled on that fitted to Giradot's car in the 1905 French Gordon Bennett Eliminating Trials.'

The DVLA record shows the Clement as a 1906 Clement Talbot, a company that originally sold Clement Bayard cars which had been built in France. The company later became STD Motors (Sunbeam Talbot Darracq), then simply Talbot, and eventually Sunbeam Talbot.

I've been able to find out very little about the CGV, but on 12 August 2017 I showed a photograph of another CGV that I'd taken at Donington Park in 2007.

CGV

This was one of a group of Edwardian cars in the paddock at the SeeRed meeting at Donington Park in September 2007.

There was no information about it in the programme of the event, but it's a 1904 CGV and has a 4,944cc engine. The CGV company was formed in 1901 by Fernand Charron, Leonce Giradot & Emile Voigt, and was based in Puteaux to the north-west of Paris.

The cars were gathered in the paddock to take part in a run for Edwardian cars, and the programme said this about that run:

'Edwardian Run

At 9.30am on Saturday up to 15 Edwardian cars (1905-'19)

will leave the paddock on the third 40 mile Grand Prix Run.

The run, organised by Ron Birkett, was set up in 2005 to

mark the centenary of the first GP in Dieppe.'