Mochet Vélocar

Charles Mochet, born on 30 March 1880, was an inventor before he was a maker.source 1source 2 Around 1910 he was trying to build aeroplanes in a workshop on the Corniche at Marseille. Shortly before 1914 he went to Morocco with Georges’s uncle to start a transport business, raced a De Dion-Bouton there while the uncle drove a car of their own make, the Meziane, and during the war built a small pedal car that ran in Casablanca. Back in Marseille he worked on an engine without valves, tested in an Austin on several runs to Paris, and that is why the family moved to the capital. At Saint-Ouen they built 120 to 130 two-seat voiturettes, the Mochet 4 CV CM, with a 350 cc two-stroke.source 1 He has a place on our page of the designers.

A car instead of a bicycle

Then Georges wanted a bicycle, and Mme Mochet would not have it.source 3source 1 His father first built him a two-seat quadricycle from voiturette parts, with pedals that pumped up and down; to change gear you moved the chain’s anchor on the cranks. Next, in the middle of designing a 500 cc twin for his voiturettes, he built the boy a single-seater. A photograph of 1925 shows Georges in it at eleven, and the family chose its name, Vélocar, after a discussion round the table.source 1 Lying back against a seatback, the rider could push harder on the pedals than a cyclist can, and the faired body cut the drag. Georges left his friends and their bicycles behind; he put it down to the pedalling position, but above all to the shape of the body.source 4source 1

Charles built a two-seater for fun. Someone bought it, so he built more.source 3source 1

Il s’en vendit un par semaine, puis un par jour.

The pedal car paid better than the voiturettes, so for the time being it replaced them, and the Mochets gave up powered cars.source 3source 1 Production began in 1925.source 3source 1 When the lease at Saint-Ouen ran out, an architect friend talked Charles into buying land at Puteaux and building a workshop there, at 66–68 rue Roque-de-Fillol; the town’s archives date the first Vélocars made there to 1927. Georges later married the architect’s daughter.source 1source 5

Two bicycles’ worth

The production Vélocar was a two-seater on four bicycle wheels, with a tubular steel chassis and a very light, pointed body of aircraft plywood. Each rider had a set of pedals, and their chains ran to a shaft under the seat that carried a three-speed gear and a freewheel that acted as a differential; the gear lever sat between the seats, and there was room for luggage.source 3source 1source 6source 7 The Lane Motor Museum gives prices of about 2,500 to 3,900 francs.source 3 When few people could afford a car, it cost no more to keep than two bicycles, and two good riders went faster on the flat than on a tandem. It did not take corners well.source 1source 8 It is counted with the cyclecars, though it had no engine at all.

Around 1930 Vélocars were used to pace riders in important cycle races.source 1source 8 In 1932 Charles won the grand prize of the association of French inventors and small manufacturers at the Concours Lépine, and every year the firm held a rally for its customers, the Œufs de Pâques, with a Vélocar as first prize.source 1source 8 Sales rose in 1936, when the French won paid holidays.source 5 English Wikipedia says the pedal car’s popularity faded in the late 1930s, as cheaper powered cars appeared.source 7

Half a Vélocar

The record that made the name was set on two wheels, not four. In the winter of 1930, at an inn in Nonancourt, Charles, his wife, Alexandre Laurant and Georges decided to build a fully faired racing tricycle from Vélocar parts, for publicity. It was fast on the road and round Longchamp but slow on the steep bankings of the Saint-Denis track, so they cut the pedal car in half: the Vélo-Vélocar, a recumbent bicycle.source 1 The champion Henri Lemoine tried it, was delighted, and would not race it.source 8source 2

Francis Faure would. A track sprinter who had won the six-day race at Saint-Étienne, but a second-category rider, he took the Vélo-Vélocar to the Parc des Princes in July 1933 and rode 45.055 km in the hour, beating the 44.247 km Oscar Egg had set in 1914.source 1source 8source 7 His fellow professionals had a line for it:

Si tu pédales couché, c’est que tu dois être bien fatigué !

Was it a bicycle? The cycling authorities argued about it for a year (see records and feats). At its congress in Paris on 11 August 1933, where an amateur named Martin rode a Vélocar round the conference table, the UCI put off a decision; the minutes, obtained by Marc Tauss in 2003, record a vote of 52 to 44 against the machine. Georges Mochet says that a congress of 3 February 1934 ratified Faure’s rides as world records and set up a commission to define the bicycle anew.source 1source 8 Before that congress of February 1934, Charles had written to the delegates:

Ou bien la bicyclette horizontale est une erreur, sans avenir ; dans ce cas, elle disparaîtra comme elle est venue et sera vite oubliée. Ou bien, au contraire, le hasard a voulu qu’elle représente un progrès… vous ne voudrez pas prendre la responsabilité d’empêcher sa manifestation.

The new definition, published in June 1934, fixed a record bicycle by its dimensions and put other human-powered machines into a category of their own.source 1source 8 Faure’s hour disappeared from the ordinary lists. It is often called the most famous ban in cycling, but it concerned the two-wheeled recumbent, never the four-wheeled pedal car.source 8source 7 Charles Mochet died on 3 June 1934. That day, in a road race, his rider Paul Morand broke away on a Vélo-Vélocar and gained 10 minutes, until the team managers set the whole field to chase him down; he was caught 50 km from the finish.source 1

War, engines and the end

His widow, Georges and Alexandre Laurant carried on as Établissements Charles Mochet.source 5source 6 When the war came, demand for the two-seaters boomed, and when petrol all but vanished, Vélocar sales rose sharply. Under the Occupation more and more were given engines by their owners or by motorcycle firms, and some were electrified.source 1source 8source 5source 7

From about 1945 the firm fitted engines itself. The Type H was a two-seater with a 99 cc Zurcher engine behind the seats; it had no starter, so you pedalled to start it, and it ran at about 34 km/h (21 mph).source 3source 4source 1 The Lane museum dates its own Type H to 1931 and says 650 were built from 1931 to 1948, which does not fit Georges’s memory of engines only after the war.source 4source 1 The Type K and the Mochet CM 125 followed, among the licence-free cars of post-war France, and the last of them were real small cars with no pedals at all; every CM carried a triangle marked VÉLOCAR where the steering wheel was mounted.source 1source 6 At its peak the Puteaux works employed 20 to 30 people and made 30 to 40 cars a month, delivered in six weeks when a new 2CV took years. A decree of 1957 requiring a licence for engines of 50 to 125 cc closed the firm; the archives date the last production to 1958.source 5 Georges took a job with a maker of hydraulic equipment, and died in 2008.source 8source 7

Some pedal Vélocars survive, among them a 1937 car at Arès, in the Gironde.source 6 A pedal Vélocar of 1926 and a Type H are in the Lane Motor Museum, Nashville.source 3source 4 They were made to last: around 1989 a man who hired out more than thirty of them in the Parc Borély at Marseille said they were the only machines that survived his customers.source 8 About 35 of the recumbents survive in museums and private collections, and their rediscovery in California in the late 1970s helped start the recumbent movement of the 1980s.source 7 No count of the pedal cars has been found.