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Alan

One man’s car: two years in the making, named from the first letters of ALexeline ANdré, and driven more than 600 kilometres (370 miles) with his family on its first trip. Its maker never learned that it had survived.

No photograph yet. No free picture of the Alan is known. We will never draw one; if the 1955 press photograph can be traced and licensed, it goes here.

At a glance

The spec plate

Alan

One-off · France

Built
1955Homologated for the road
Country
France
Maker
André AlexelineA private constructor, more than two years’ work
Production
1A single car
Survives
YesRestored about 1990; whereabouts unknown

Not yet recordedengine, power, top speed, length, weight, seats and wheels and layout.

How big is it?

True proportion

Length unknown

No reliable length has been found. The Fiat 500, the Peel P50 and the adult stay, so the gap is shown, not hidden.

Drawn at true proportion. The track is 3.6 metres long; the adult stands at the same scale. The Peel P50 is the smallest production car, on every page for comparison.

Beside its contemporaries

The French microcars on the road in 1955, on the same 3.5 m scale. Lengths of cars without a page yet come from the census and are unverified.

  1. Velam Isetta1955–⁠1958 · France

    2.38 m

  2. Avolette1955–⁠1958 · France

    2.40 m

  3. Mochet CM-1251945–⁠1958 · France

    2.40 m

  4. Solyto1952–⁠1974 · France

    2.45 m

  5. Voisin Biscooter1949–⁠1957 · France

    2.57 m

  6. Rovin1946–⁠1958 · France

    2.80 m

  7. Inter 175 A Berline1953–⁠1956 · France

    3.00 m

  8. Alan1955 · France

The story

History

The Alan has nothing to do with the German Alan of the early 1920s. It is a French car of the 1950s, and there was only ever one. André Alexeline worked on it for more than two years, and when it was homologated for the road he named it after himself: the first two letters of his surname and of his first name, AL and AN.1

Its first outing was not a trip round the block. In 1955 Alexeline set off on a tour of more than 600 km with his wife and child aboard, and a press photograph shows him at the wheel, proud to pose for the press.1 Which paper printed it is not known.

Found in pieces

At the end of the 1980s the car turned up again: dismantled, incomplete and left out in the weather, the kind of wreck few would have given much for. Its finder, who later wrote the original microcarfan.com, took no photographs of it as he found it, and regretted that afterwards. He spent more than a year of his spare time restoring it to its original state.1

Then he went looking for its maker, to show him the car, by then more than 35 years old. Alexeline’s widow told him that her husband had died only a few months before. In his last years he had tried to find out whether the car still existed, and had even nursed the slightly mad hope of seeing it again. All that time the car had been only 65 km (40 miles) from him.1

What we do not know

Everything here rests on one source, the restorer’s own page. The Alan’s engine, size, body, number of wheels and homologation date are not recorded, nor where in France it was built or where it is now. A period source, such as the French registration records or a regional newspaper of 1955, could settle them.

Sources

One source so far

The Alan rests on a single source. A search for “Alexeline” in October 2026 found nothing further.

  1. The original microcarfan.com (2006–⁠2016), marque page “ALAN”, written by the car’s restorer. Read in full from the archived copy; it holds no specifications and no surviving pictures.