Topic: Solved NIC#79 - 1905 Contal mototri

[nicanary]

What is this, and when was it built? And what is the marque's main claim to fame?

[nicanary]

Experts?

[nicanary]

Quick bump before it's solved by the Pros.

[nicanary]

OK. Pro time it is.....

[targhediferro]

I suppose it's a Contal Tricar, about 1907

[Allan L]

All these forecars look similar and it's hard to be sure which is which, but I think he's got it!
Two Tri-Contals were entered in the original Peking-Paris event in 1907 and dropped out of it quite early and even the make was hardly heard of again. That'd be the main claim to fame you are looking for I think.
There was a piece in "PreWarCar" about 15 months ago and one of our members (not me!) contributed to the discussion.

[targhediferro]

Perhaps the one you're searching for is the Gaston Rivierre (Contal) .
I've copied the text of the article you were speaking about.
"By Fons Alkemade: This year the world can commemorate the birth in 1862 of Gaston Rivierre. I don't think this 150th anniversary will actually be given any notice in automotive circles. Perhaps there will be some attention given to M. Rivierre in circles of those interested in the history of cycling, as he once was a famous coureur who won several classic cycle courses in the 1890s. He also built the first tandem d'entraînement (derny) and invented a hub which he sold under his own name in Paris around 1904. In the same period he must have become involved with the company founded by Camille Contal. Contal had been working in the battery and the electric vehicle industry but turned to so-called tricars with combustion engines in 1905.
Tricars became quite popular in the 1900s. Like the tricycles they were derived from motorcycles but had their own characteristics: two front wheels, one rear wheel, the passenger in front of the driver, a rather powerful engine and a maximum weight of 200 kilograms. Among the other French tricar builders of the period were Austral, Bruneau and Griffon (Continue at 'Read More')

Contal presented its tricars at the 1905 Salon and started an extensive campaign to promote them. In the ads the tricar was called "the cheapest automobile in the world". Contals appeared in several sporting events like the Tour de France and Course de c?te de Gaillon (where a Contal was first in its class). When the French journal Le Matin announced the 1907 Peking to Paris race, Contal must have seen this event as the opportunity to make his tricars known around the world. On the 10th of June 1907 Auguste Pons did indeed start the single cylinder engine of his 6 hp Mototri Contal in Peking. The tricar had some special features like mudguards which could be taken off and then transformed into a bridge. But from the first day the Contal couldn't keep pace with the other participants and regularly it couldn't move at all when its rear wheel was dangling in the air. They tried to catch up by covering the first part of the route by train but had to give up when the engine broke down.
Surprisingly, this failure didn't mean the end of the Contal tricar but one gets the impression that after 1907 they hardly succeeded in reaching the market. This despite the fact that Contal offered his tricars also as cheap and handy delivery vans and that he made his tricars somewhat more sophisticated than the others. Unfortunately for Contal, the great days of the tricar were over around 1910.
Gaston Rivierre tried to set up his own automobile factory in 1912 in Levallois-Perret but the Rivierre car didn't succeed. Gaston seems to have kept cycling well into his sixties."

[nicanary]

Sorry, Allan, but Targhediferro got in very quickly there. The point is his because I would have locked it for him to complete the puzzle, and we all know he knew what I was looking for.

Yes, it is indeed a Contal Mototri from about 1905/06. And I reckon the claim to fame is a good one, even if the vehicle itself was a complete failure during the event. They must have been VERY optimistic, or simply did not do an adequate pre-race survey. The car was abandoned in the Gobi desert, and I think there's a chance it's still there to this day. I just looked up the Wiki entry for the race, and apparently there were 40 entries, but just 5 cars turned up at the start. It's a fascinating story, what with the shenanigans of Charles Goddard and his Spyker.

[Allan L]

Sorry, Allan, but Targhediferro got in very quickly there. The point is his because I would have locked it for him to complete the puzzle, and we all know he knew what I was looking for.

No need to apologise, my contribution was more of an endorsement of what he'd found than a bid for a point!

[Craig Gillingham]

There was a piece in "PreWarCar" about 15 months ago and one of our members (not me!) contributed to the discussion.

That may have been me, that made the contribution on prewarcar (my second favorite website), regarding the Contal. Back when the re-enactment of the Peking to Paris was taking place, the organisers made a statement that no Contals were known to survive. I remembered that there was an article in the Classic Motor Cycle magazine from a few years previous, that there was a Contal forecar, in a museum in France. I think there are about three Contals in existence, to date.

I understand it's easy to look back in hindsight and say there were a few around, and they weren't totally obscure. But at the time, they were looking for an original Contal to use, or at least copy from.

[grobmotorix]

Here´s a nice 1907 photo of the Peking-Paris raid Contal tricycle: