La Voiture Électronique Porquerolles

The brothers Jean and Jacques Jarret founded La Voiture Électronique in 1968, and showed a prototype at that year’s Paris Motor Show, where it drew a good deal of interest.source 3source 1source 4 What they had in mind, as the Weiner museum quotes the company, was a vehicle for short trips.

The first cars were the most daring. Lane says they ran on the Jarrets’ own switched-reluctance motors, each a steel flywheel on an axle driven round by 24 magnetic coils switched on in sequence, and that only seven were made: two prototypes and five pre-production cars.source 1 The museum calls the original the first drive-by-wire vehicle ever produced. That is Lane’s superlative, and no other source used here repeats it.source 1 In 1969 the car was presented to President Georges Pompidou, and 1969 is the year both museums give their cars.source 1source 4source 5

One stick

There was no steering wheel. A single joystick governed acceleration, braking and steering; the Weiner museum calls it the Stil, the 1972 report the Stilic, and the museum says the name came from the column of classical Greece, a symbol of purity, simplicity and elegance.source 5source 4 Each of the two rear wheels had its own electric motor, driving it by chain. To turn, the two museums explain, the electronics sent more current to one motor than the other, so one wheel ran faster, and the single front wheel simply followed, like a castor.source 5source 1source 4 The two seats sat in a triangular polyester tub on a steel chassis, and the whole three-wheeler was 1,800 mm (71 in) long and 1,100 mm (43 in) wide.source 5source 3source 4

The Porquerolles itself was built from May 1972.source 3source 4 According to Lane, the series cars used conventional DC motors and mechanical steering, still worked by the joystick, and four 12 V lead-acid batteries gave them 48 V.source 1source 4 So the steering by motor speed may belong to the earliest cars rather than to every Porquerolles; the sources do not settle it. The 1972 report put the works at Creutzwald, in the Moselle, and named the shareholders: EDF, the motor maker Leroy-Somer, Sofirem and the Institut de développement industriel.source 4 German Wikipedia places the company in Paris’s 16th arrondissement.source 3 Why the car bore the name of Porquerolles, an island off Hyères, no source explains, and whether it could be driven without a licence, like the licence-free cars of the same years, has not been found either.

A tester used to Ferraris

In August 1972 the magazine L’Automobile tested a Porquerolles, and its account is known today through a retelling on automobile-propre.com.source 4 The tester normally drove Ferraris and Maseratis. The stick took practice: on his first real start the car shot away like a rocket, zigzagging. He liked its tiny footprint, its manoeuvrability and its range, which he found acceptable, and thought it an excellent car for holiday resorts.source 4

He found plenty against it. It was too dear, at 5,960 F including tax; it gave its occupants no protection; it held its line poorly downhill; and its brakes were weak, their cables needing re-tensioning after three hours. Paris traffic, in so exposed a machine, daunted him. The maker claimed 25 km/h (16 mph), and he managed about 20 (12 mph); the report gave the range as about 50 km (31 miles), or three hours on one charge.source 4

Cab, Cob and the end

In October 1972 came the Cab, the same car with a windscreen and, by the Weiner museum’s account, a rudimentary roof and 60 V electrics.source 3source 5 The Cob of 1973 was a small utility, 2,540 mm (100 in) long and 1,200 mm (47 in) wide, with a full body, 96 V electrics by the museum’s account, and a steering wheel: it was the only model to have one.source 5source 3 No count of either has been found. Production ended in 1976, German Wikipedia says.source 3 No account has been found of what became of the company after that, or of the Jarret brothers.

Nashville’s Lane Motor Museum owns one, catalogued as a Jarret La Voiture Electronique of 1969.source 2source 1 The Bruce Weiner Microcar Museum showed a 1969 Porquerolles (see museums and meets).source 5 In the photographs here, one stands at the Musée auto-moto-vélo in Châtellerault and another at Autoworld in Brussels. No other survivors, auction results or club have been found.