What Facel Vega ?
Discussion
Thank you for your kind comments about my somewhat tatty Facellia which I brought to the Goodwood breakfast show. More of you might have seen it if I had come in the right gate – I had a ‘Grid’ pass but entered via the Lavant road and once on the track was told to park then and there. I should have known better; after all, I first visited Goodwood in the fifties and only live ten miles away!
The Facellia is one of what I call ‘the little cars’: Facellia, Facel 111 and Facel 6. Just over a thousand Facellias were made in convertible, fix-head coupe and four seater form, powered by Facel’s own engine, developed by the gearbox company, Pont-a-Mousson. My car is one of eight of the 15 convertibles imported into the UK still roadworthy, one fixed-head survives and three four seater fixed-heads.
The Facel 111 replaced the Facellia, powered by the Volvo B18 engine as there were massive warranty claims against the 1.6 Pont-a-Mousson engine which indeed banged the final nail in the Facel coffin. Facel 111s were not imported into this country, and nor was its successor, the Facel 6 powered by an Austin-Healey engine, although one of the three or four in the UK lives down the road in Funtingdon and completed the Round-the-World rally a few years ago.
I’ve had my car for around 30 years. Like many Pont-a-Mousson engined cars, it no longer has its 1600cc power pack – term used advisedly. If you had looked carefully, you would have seen two exhausts protruding at the back. As a pedestrian told me many years ago when I was stuck in a traffic jam in Battersea ‘that’s making the wrong noise’, stuck his nose in the air and walked on, because it is what its creator called it, a Facel 8 with an elderly Rover V8 engine. It’s actually very nicely balanced and with its five speed gearbox, a nice car to drive and actually reliable!
Finally – apologies for going on a bit – sorry about the patina! All my finances are going into restoring a Facel Vega Excellence and the Facellia is suffering, although I did get the seats rebuilt a few years ago. Polishing the rusty bubbly bits is a bit like polishing the proverbial t**d; when the Excellence emerges from Cornwall, I’m intending the Facellia to go the other way and have the bodywork done. M. D. Wilde, whose photo illustrates the car, has called it ‘croustillante’ although no French colleague has yet been brave enough to tell me what that means! In the meantime, it gets used and much fun it is too.
Finally finally, for those of you fed up with us Facel people invading your site, our own Facel site is being relaunched in the next couple of months so you can find us over there and we’ll stop bothering you!
The Facellia is one of what I call ‘the little cars’: Facellia, Facel 111 and Facel 6. Just over a thousand Facellias were made in convertible, fix-head coupe and four seater form, powered by Facel’s own engine, developed by the gearbox company, Pont-a-Mousson. My car is one of eight of the 15 convertibles imported into the UK still roadworthy, one fixed-head survives and three four seater fixed-heads.
The Facel 111 replaced the Facellia, powered by the Volvo B18 engine as there were massive warranty claims against the 1.6 Pont-a-Mousson engine which indeed banged the final nail in the Facel coffin. Facel 111s were not imported into this country, and nor was its successor, the Facel 6 powered by an Austin-Healey engine, although one of the three or four in the UK lives down the road in Funtingdon and completed the Round-the-World rally a few years ago.
I’ve had my car for around 30 years. Like many Pont-a-Mousson engined cars, it no longer has its 1600cc power pack – term used advisedly. If you had looked carefully, you would have seen two exhausts protruding at the back. As a pedestrian told me many years ago when I was stuck in a traffic jam in Battersea ‘that’s making the wrong noise’, stuck his nose in the air and walked on, because it is what its creator called it, a Facel 8 with an elderly Rover V8 engine. It’s actually very nicely balanced and with its five speed gearbox, a nice car to drive and actually reliable!
Finally – apologies for going on a bit – sorry about the patina! All my finances are going into restoring a Facel Vega Excellence and the Facellia is suffering, although I did get the seats rebuilt a few years ago. Polishing the rusty bubbly bits is a bit like polishing the proverbial t**d; when the Excellence emerges from Cornwall, I’m intending the Facellia to go the other way and have the bodywork done. M. D. Wilde, whose photo illustrates the car, has called it ‘croustillante’ although no French colleague has yet been brave enough to tell me what that means! In the meantime, it gets used and much fun it is too.
Finally finally, for those of you fed up with us Facel people invading your site, our own Facel site is being relaunched in the next couple of months so you can find us over there and we’ll stop bothering you!
Bob CD said:
Finally finally, for those of you fed up with us Facel people invading your site, our own Facel site is being relaunched in the next couple of months so you can find us over there and we’ll stop bothering you!
Hopefully I'm not alone, I love reading the long running Facel thread on here even though I don't own one. Its certainly not a bother!And thanks for sharing the story of your car
I'd never heard of Pont a Mousson engines before - what was the cause of all the failures, was it just generally unreliable or they had a major flaw?
Chris944_S2 said:
I'd never heard of Pont a Mousson engines before - what was the cause of all the failures, was it just generally unreliable or they had a major flaw?
I believe that one major flaw was that the camshafts (twin overhead) had only 2 bearings each which resulted in rather more flexibility than was desirable.Gassing Station | Classic Cars and Yesterday's Heroes | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff