Leyat

Last updated
Leyat, Automobiles Leyat
Founded1913
Defunct1927
Headquarters
Paris
,
France
Number of locations
 Quai de Grenelle in the 15th arrondissement, Paris.
Key people
 Marcel Leyat (born in Die).
Products Automobiles
The Leyat, 1921 Leyat 1921 Heck.JPG
The Leyat, 1921
Leyat interior Leyat Interieur.JPG
Leyat interior

Leyat, Automobiles Leyat was a French automobile manufacturer, established in 1919 in Paris by Marcel Leyat.

Contents

The Hélica was known as 'The plane without wings'. The passengers sat behind each other like in an aircraft, which was driven by a giant propeller powered by an 8 bhp (6.0 kW) Scorpion engine. The body of the vehicle was made of plywood.

The factory was on the Quai de Grenelle in the 15th arrondissement.

Marcel Leyat

Marcel Leyat (March 26, 1885 (Die, Drôme) - December 3, 1986) was an engineer, inventor, aviation pioneer, and aeronautical and automobile manufacturer. He graduated from the École Centrale Paris in 1907. From 1908, he worked for the Société Astra and built a biplane glider called the Quand Quelle (When, which). [1] In 1909 he targeted "the first powered crossing of the English Channel", but Louis Blériot succeeded on July 21, three weeks before his De Dion-Bouton 5 hp powered plane completed a flight of 200 metres (220 yd) at 10 metres (33 ft) elevation on August 15. In 1910, he built a propeller-driven biplane 11 metres (36 ft) long and 16 metres (52 ft) wide. He obtained the FAI pilot's license in 1911. During the First World War, he built several aircraft, including a "living wing" bomber. In all, he designed and built around thirty different aircraft up to World War II. [1]

Description

The first model was called Hélica, also known as 'The plane without wings'. The passengers sat behind each other as if they were in an aircraft. The vehicle was steered using the rear wheels and the car was not powered by an engine turning the wheels, but by a giant propeller powered by an 8 bhp (6.0 kW) Scorpion engine. The entire body of the vehicle was made of plywood, and weighed just 250 kg (550 lb), which made it dangerously fast.

Performance

In 1927, a Hélica reached the speed of 106 mph (171 km/h) at the Autodrome de Linas-Montlhéry circuit. Leyat continued to experiment with his Helica. He tried using propellers with two and four blades. [2]

Production

Between 1919 and 1925, Leyat sold 30 vehicles.

Vehicle models

References

  1. 1 2 L'Hélica Marcel Layat Archived 2013-10-05 at the Wayback Machine , archives en ligne [revue de presse, biographie, actualités d'époque].
  2. ↑ The Marcel LEYAT's Helica Various versions Archived 2020-11-12 at the Wayback Machine www.helica.info, accessed 3 April 2021

Literature

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.