01 Le MONTELIER MUSEE de la Fondation BERLIET Page 2

Berliet ended up being a French manufacturer involving automobiles, buses, trucks and military autos among other vehicles within Vénissieux, outside of Lyon, France. Founded in 1899, and apart from the five-year period from 1944 to 1949 when it absolutely was put into 'administration sequestre' it had been in private ownership until 1967 when after that it became part of Citroën, and subsequently acquired through Renault in 1974 in addition to merged with Saviem right new Renault Trucks organization in 1978. The Berliet marque was phased out by 1980.Marius Berliet started his experiments with automobiles throughout 1894. Some single-cylinder cars were followed in 1900 with a twin-cylinder model. In 1902, Berliet took over this plant of Audibert & Lavirotte with Lyon. Berliet started to create four-cylinder automobiles featured by a honeycomb radiator and metal chassis frame was used rather then wood. The next year, a model was launched that's similar to contemporary Mercedes. In 1906, Berliet sold the driving licence for manufacturing his model towards American Locomotive Company.

01 Le MONTELIER MUSEE de la Fondation BERLIET Page 3

Before World War I, Berliet offered a selection of models from 8 CONTINUE to 60 CV. The main models had four-cylinder engines (2412 cc and 4398 cc, respectively), and there was a six-cylinder model of 9500 cc. A 1539 cc type (12 CV) was produced between 1910 in addition to 1912. From 1912, six-cylinder models were built upon individual orders solely.The First World War resulted in a massive increase widely used. Berliet, like Renault and Latil, produced trucks for your French army. The military orders placed major demands around the factory's capacity, necessitating major investment throughout production plant and factory space.In 1915 a 500 hectare site was bought between Vénissieux et Saint-Priest so that you can build a new major factory.The Berliet CBA grew to be the iconic truck for the Voie Sacrée, supplying the battle entrance at Verdun during 1916. 25, 000 of these 4/5 heap Berliet trucks, originally launched in 1914, were ordered by this French army. During 1916 40 of which were leaving the plant every day. Under license from Renault, Berliet were also providing shells and battle tanks currently. The number of workers employed increased to 3, 150.By 1917 the value of annual turnover had multiplied fourfold since the start of the war, and a new lawful structure was deemed correct. The company became the actual Société anonyme des Cars Marius Berliet.After the war the manufacturer reoriented portion of its production back in order to passenger cars, but Berliet nevertheless observed themselves with excess capacity, as the army was don't buying all the trucks the factory could generate, and overall output halved.Marius Berliet responded for the outbreak of peace by deciding to generate just a single kind of truck and a single sort of car, which represented a departure from his pre-war market place strategy. The single truck which Berliet focused was the 5 ton CBA that had served the country so well during this war.

01 Le MONTELIER MUSEE de la Fondation BERLIET Page 2

The passenger car to become produced, exhibited on the Berliet stand with the 15th Paris Motor Present in October 1919, was the 3296cc (15HP/CV) "Torpedo" bodied "Berliet Kind VB" of modern overall look. Marius Berliet was it's unlikely that any to miss a trick: rather than devote period and engineering talent to making a new car for the modern decade, he obtained and ripped an American Dodge. The Dodge was notoriously robust, and the Berliet content was well received with March 1919 when that had its first open outing, locally, at the Lyon Buy and sell Fair. The headlights were mounted unusually high as well as the simple disc wheels were large, giving the car a pleasing "no nonsense" look. Particularly attractive was the price of just 11, 800 francs in March 1919. Unfortunately, however, the Berliet engineers failed to ensure the steel used from the car's construction was on the same quality as the North american steel used for your Dodge, and this resulted in series problems with the early customers of this "Berliet Type VB" and serious reputational injury to the company.

Fondation de l’automobile Marius Berliet VerdunMeuse.fr

01 Le MONTELIER MUSEE de la Fondation BERLIET Page 2

The factory was set up to create the "Berliet Type VB" in the rate of 100 cars on a daily basis which would have already been an ambitious target underneath any circumstances. The rapid drop-off sought after for what at this time was the manufacturer's solely passenger car model that followed the coffee quality issues plunged the enterprise into financial difficulties, with losses of fifty five million francs recorded in one year. Survival was in hesitation, and Berliet was used in judicial administration in 1921. Marius Berliet himself had held 88% from the share capital, but was unable to repay all the company's creditors and also the firm therefore fell into the hands of the banking companies. Berliet was nevertheless competent to retain operational control. During the ensuring ten years, supported by a sustained recovery in demand that in turn reflected an effective model strategy after 1922, Berliet was able to his debtors and, in 1929, to regain financial control within the business from the banking institutions.

may be governed by copyright. – Send suggestions We Comply All TakeDown by Request.

thanks for coming