The story
History
Gabriel Voisin studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, built a practical aeroplane in 1907, and made his firm the first to mass-produce aircraft; by 1918 he was a millionaire.source 1source 2 He then left aviation for cars, building luxury Avions Voisin at Issy-les-Moulineaux, with the engineer André Lefebvre, who went on to design the Citroën 2CV and DS.source 1 In the 1930s he lost control of his company to the engine maker Gnome et Rhône, and he worked there through the war; in 1938 he had set up a design office of his own, L’Aéromécanique.source 1source 2 In 1945 Gnome et Rhône, with Avions Voisin, was nationalised into SNECMA.source 2
So the Biscooter does not fit the old story of aircraft makers turning to cars because they were banned from aircraft. Voisin had left aviation after 1918, and what stopped his car was not a ban but his nationalised employer.source 1source 2
Infinite simplicity
In 1949 Voisin offered the firm that still bore his name the rights to a microcar built round Gnome et Rhône’s own 125 cc two-stroke motorcycle engine. In the summer of 1949 the old Voisin works at Issy built 16 of them, by the Weiner museum’s count, or about 15 by RM’s; the management of SNECMA thought the project had no future. Two of the prototypes were given to Voisin himself.source 3source 2
He designed it on a principle he called infinite simplicity, with every component a module arranged by what it did.source 1 It looked like a bare chassis carrying two chairs and a flat windscreen, all in polished aluminium under a big canvas top.source 1 The body was riveted aluminium sheet, with a soft top and the spare wheel in the boot, and the 6 hp engine sat at the front and drove the front wheels.source 2source 4 From his luxury cars of the 1930s Voisin kept one refinement: behind the three-speed gearbox, a second box with two ratios.source 2source 5 The name means “double scooter”: the car was about the size of two scooters, or a scooter on four wheels.source 4source 1source 2 Its 125 cc version could, by one account, be driven in France without a licence, like the other small licence-free cars of the time.source 5
A thousand orders, no factory
Shown in Paris in 1950, at the Salon du Cycle et de la Moto by RM’s account, the Biscooter was a sensation, with more than 1,000 orders.source 1source 3 Voisin was already at odds with the directors of Gnome et Rhône and SNECMA over it.source 3 In October 1950 he redesigned it with low body sides, and from 1951 it had a larger engine, the 197 cc Villiers two-stroke.source 3 SNECMA would still not build it. For the Paris Salon of 1952 its management showed a conventional small car of their own, which drew little attention, to Voisin’s contempt.source 1
He sold the licence to Spain instead, in 1951 by one of RM’s descriptions, in June 1952 by the other, or in June 1953 by the Weiner museum’s; the date is unresolved.source 1source 2source 3 Autonacional SA of Barcelona launched it in 1953 as the Biscúter, a car built under licence, and in Spain it became a national icon and a byword: feo como un Biscúter, ugly as a Biscúter.source 4source 6 In France it never went on sale.
Voisin went on building versions of it for several years: single-seaters, three-seaters and four-seaters.source 1 The last known is a four-seater dated 1957, with near-circular doors, basket-weave seats and a speedometer set in the steering wheel. RM suggests it may have been developed for the Spaniards and turned down as too costly; the Weiner museum calls it possibly a prototype.source 1source 3 Voisin stayed at Issy, in research, until the plant closed in 1958.source 1 He retired to Ozenay, in Saône-et-Loire, and died in 1973.source 7 He has a place among the designers.
