The story
History
It began as one man’s answer to one man’s problem. Émile Boussereau, the village mechanic at Villeneuve-la-Comtesse in Charente-Maritime, built a small vehicle for a disabled young man who needed to get about.source 1source 2 CarJager dates that first Comtesse to the 1960s; the English Wikipedia says the request came in 1970.source 1source 2 The French Wikipedia says Boussereau built about 20 before he sold the rights, though it gives no source for the number.source 3 The village gave the car its name.source 4
ACOMA took it on: the Ateliers de Construction de Matériel, an industrial firm in the west of France that built forklift trucks.source 4source 1 It began at Laval, but according to the old microcarfan.com very few cars left the works there, because within months the factory moved to Saint-Barthélemy-d’Anjou, on the edge of Angers.source 4 The French Wikipedia puts the move in 1972.source 3
One door, then two
The collector who ran the original microcarfan.com printed what he called a rare document of 1972, showing the first form of the car with one door only. He also passed on a legend. An early owner lost control and went into a ditch, the car fell onto its door side, and she was trapped inside; after that the cars got a second door, a folding gullwing on the other side, and two small stabiliser wheels at the front. In twenty years of looking he had never seen a one-door car survive.source 4 The Lane Motor Museum gives a plainer reason for the gullwing: it lets the driver climb out when the car is parked nose-in between two others.source 5 Both may be true.
An engine on the steering
The series car, the stripped type 73 and the 730E, was a tall glass-fibre pod on three wheels and a steel-tube frame, with one seat and a boot reached from inside.source 4source 6 The engine, a 47 cc Sachs Saxonette or a 50 cc Motobécane, sat on top of the single front wheel and drove it, so the whole assembly swung from side to side as the driver turned a steering wheel. Both were unusual in its class: for a long time it was the only front-wheel-drive car in it.source 4source 1 Behind it were a centrifugal clutch and two speeds, and no reverse at all. Only the rear wheels had brakes.source 5source 6 The stripped type 73 had no speedometer and no electric wiper, and was started by pulling a cord.source 4 Over the years the round lamps became rectangular and the windscreen grew a few centimetres taller.source 4
The law of the day added one more oddity. A cyclomoteur carrossé, an enclosed moped, had to be movable by pedal, so ACOMA fitted a ratcheting foot pedal chained to the left rear wheel through a one-way clutch. It moved the car only a little, and the requirement was later dropped.source 5 In 2016 Jason Torchinsky drove the Lane museum’s car for Jalopnik, found the pedal close to useless on a hill, and watched the engine swivel with the wheel.source 7
a tiny, slow, stifling porta-potty/probable coffin, and it barely qualifies as driving
The biggest of the boom
None of this held it back. In 1979 ACOMA sold 3,500 vehicles of all types, which made it France’s largest maker of licence-free cars; the Weiner museum puts its share at about 30 per cent of the market.source 6source 8
The odd styling, folding gullwing door on one side and regular door on the other, and dangerous instability didn’t hurt sales at all.
The range spread out. The type 770 of 1977 had a roomier body that could take a child, with the steering wheel on the right, and there was a very rare electric Electro-Comtesse with a sheet-steel body.source 4 In 1978 the Super Comtesse 780E put the idea on four wheels, with a Motobécane engine under the seat, rear-wheel drive and, at last, a reverse gear.source 4 The Comtesse Break of 1979, in white or beige only, was a two-seat box with about a cubic metre (35 cu ft) inside. To carry two adults legally it was approved as a special vehicle limited to 25 km/h (16 mph), a restriction lifted at the end of 1980. The old site compares it to a telephone box or a sedan chair, and its driving position to a 35-tonne lorry’s.source 4 A Berline, a Coupé and an open red Sport followed in 1980, and the old-site author noticed the original shapes fading away.source 4source 2
March 1984
The Star and Starlette of 1982 were the first front-wheel-drive four-wheelers of the range, with disc brakes; they arrived just as the money began to run out.source 4 The Weiner museum blames rising competition and a shrinking number of older people driving sans permis.source 6 The factory doors closed for good in March 1984, and an auction dispersed everything, including a diesel Starlette prototype whose fate is unknown.source 4source 3source 8 The old site called the Mini Comtesse the first true voiture sans permis.source 4 That is one collector’s opinion: the Willam City and the Casalini Sulky were licence-free earlier.
