Retromobile captured five out of the six 1927 Grand Prix Delages for display, an amazing feat.

Story by Graham Gauld
Color images by Hugues Vanhoolandt unless otherwise noted.

Every year tends to mark the anniversary of something significant in the automobile world and 2017 is important for one car in particular, the Delage 15S8. It was one of the most successful Grand Prix cars of all time and it was born ninety years ago this year.

It was fitting that Retromobile in Paris reserved a special area upstairs and in the smaller hall for a remarkable display that featured five of the six original cars built ninety years ago! It was a tremendous feat to gather them all together in one place for the first time thanks to a group of dedicated Delage enthusiasts including my old friend Christophe Pund.

Richard Seaman was perhaps the greatest British interwar driver. Giulio Ramponi gets a time check before a race, while Seaman sits in the Delage. Courtesy RM Auctions.

Story by Nicholas Lancaster

[While doing research for this article,originally published in VeloceToday in October of 2007, Mr. Lancaster began a search to find the current location of the ex-Ramponi/Seaman Delage. He found it in the hands of Mr. Abraham Kogan, who had consigned it to the RM Auction in London. It then passed into the hands of Peter Giddings. Our thanks to RM Auctions for providing the illustrations used in this article.Ed.]

Louis Delage had been active in Grand Prix racing since before the First World War with a series of first-rate designs that had achieved numerous successes, culminating in victory in the Indianapolis 500 in 1914. In the mid-1920’s Delage returned to front line motor sport with the introduction of the 1923 2 liter V12 engined Grand Prix car, designed by Charles Planchon, and refined by his protégé Albert Lory.

Whilst the V12 eventually came good, winning the Grand Prix of Spain in 1925, the design had suffered from numerous initial teething problems, and this cost Planchon his job. For 1926, a change of formula required the use of 1.5 liter engines and Lory — who had eventually developed the V12 into a winner — took a different approach with the new car, designing a jewel-like supercharged straight-eight engine capable of 170 bhp at 8000 rpm.

By Gijsbert-Paul Berk

In 1913 Ettore Bugatti (1881 -1947) began working on the design of an eight-cylinder engine at the suggestion of his friend, the pilot Roland Garros. Early in 1914 he sent his collaborator Ernest Friderich to the US with a four-cylinder car of 5.655 liters capacity to participate in the Indianapolis 500. When later that year WWI started, Ettore had to leave his factory in Molsheim, situated in the German occupied Alsace.

Ettore Bugatti at the drawing board.

Type 30
When the European auto sport authority CSI announced that for the 1922 to 1924 seasons, the cubic capacity of Grand Prix engines would be limited to just two liters, Bugatti constructed a smaller engine to comply with these regulations. A team of four cars was entered in the 1922 French Grand Prix de Vitesse at Strasbourg. With its long and tapered aerodynamic body, the new Bugatti was nicknamed ‘Le Cigare’ in the French Motoring journals. But it had a successful debut with the three cars finishing second, third and fourth behind the winning Fiat.