The story
History
Chantecler is a rooster’s name, and the Weiner museum explains the choice: the car’s maker, Paul Vallée, had directed a French racing team, and the rooster was its emblem.source 1source 2 RM fills in the man. He ran a transport business, married into wealth, opened his own engineering works, S.I.C.R.A.F., the Société Industrielle de Constructions et de Réparation des Automobiles Françaises, and founded the Écurie France, a Grand Prix team that raced Talbot-Lago T26s with Louis Chiron among its drivers. Racing, for him, was publicity for his other businesses.source 2
He could anticipate novel ideas before others, yet he did not carry them through in practical terms.
In 1949 he launched a scooter with an open frame, “with a big splash at Montlhéry”, the Weiner museum says.source 1 RM admired its finish and its large telescopic fork, but it proved unstable, and Vespa and Lambretta left it behind. Replacing the front fork with a load platform on two wheels turned it into the Paul Vallée Triporteur, and that sold: RM counts about 5,000, seen scuttling about in every village in France.source 2 The German Wikipedia records that the firm, in Blois, began with three-wheeled scooters and load tricycles.source 3
From racer to runabout
At the Paris Salon of October 1952 Vallée showed a tiny streamlined single-seat racer on the Triporteur 175’s chassis and engine, with a steel body by Paul Née, a Brooklands-style screen and a rooster badge, and a promise of nearly 100 km/h (62 mph). Studies for a two-seater with a bench seat and a full-width screen stood beside it.source 2 The Weiner museum says that the 1952 single-seater was already called Chantecler, so the name may be that old.source 1 In 1954, the German Wikipedia says, production passed to the Société Colas of Blois.source 3
The Chantecler proper was shown at the Paris Salon of 1955.source 2 It was a bulbous teardrop in fibreglass, open, with a wide bench for two and a D-shaped steering wheel.source 1source 2 The first version had a single central headlamp, a windscreen frame of steel tube, a front bumper moulded into the body and a sharply cut-off tail, and it was identical to another car at the same Salon, the short-lived Decolon PB, whose initials RM says stood for Pierre Brissonet.source 1source 2 The production car, by the Weiner museum’s account, had two headlamps, aluminium bumpers, a fibreglass screen frame and a rounded tail, and came in ivory, red or two-tone, later blue.source 1 RM found flat spring-steel bumpers front and rear on its car, and a very solid screen with sturdy posts for the hood and side screens; the hood hung on a single T-shaped bow of fibreglass that folded away into the body.source 2 The Weiner museum says the Chantecler used the Triporteur’s frame, but RM, describing the same car, found a square-tube ladder frame with angled swing arms, which settles it.source 1source 2
It was a three-wheeler with its pair of wheels at the front and an Ydral engine ahead of the single driven wheel at the back.source 3source 2 With the 125 cc Ydral, of 5 or 6 hp, no driving licence was needed, which put it among the licence-free cars of 1950s France; the 175 cc version, with 8 hp, needed one.source 2source 3
Starting it
Like the Inter 175 A Berline, it had a Westinghouse Gyrostarter.source 1source 2 RM describes the ritual: you raise a lever in the cockpit and hold it up for at least ten seconds while the flywheel spins up with a whine that rises in pitch, then drop it, and a clutch passes the flywheel’s energy to the engine. It makes, RM adds, “for an interesting public display”.source 2 The Weiner museum judged the little car well suited to the limited job it was designed for.source 1
Two endings
The Chantecler was built from the autumn of 1956 to 1958, by the Weiner museum’s dates, or until 1957 by the German Wikipedia’s.source 1source 3 How it ended depends on whom you read.
…enjoyed a happy but brief life, cut short by the death by heart attack of M. Vallée on April 3, 1957.
RM tells it otherwise: the relative failure of the scooter was no great loss to Vallée, who shrugged and moved on, buying into a large Rolls-Royce and Ferrari dealership.source 2 The two may not conflict, if RM’s line is about the scooter years before 1957, but no obituary or other record has been found to settle it.
