I was fortunate to meet the owner/driver of a De-Deon Bouton 1911 Sports car this week. With all of 8hp and only rear wheel brakes the delightful conveyance was driven to a classic motor parade on Teignmouth Promenade. Briefly this motor car has a single cylinder engine, wood spoked wheels, zero instrumentation, steam bentwood frames to the folding hood. The brakes applied via the clutch pedal so that the clutch was always disengaged before the brakes are applied. French law required this feature on all vehicles in 1911.

(The images found below are of an identical car)

https://www.tm-img.com/image/F5S0H
https://www.tm-img.com/image/F5LxS

Quite a lot of styling changes in 10 years.





Similar single cylinder engine though.

The De-Deon Bouton 1911 Sports car could be a good base for an EV city car of todays needs.

The gentleman owner was a quiet and gentle man and explained how anticipation and an understanding of his conveyance was required to stay safe. He also described how he had steam bent the wood for the replacement hoops of the hood and had only one wheel that needed to be tightened up in the spokes department. A friend had wrapped some leather about the tennons and taken up the slack to restore tightness.
Downhill in the wet required the most care due to the rear wheels having the only breaks. Leaving sufficient space in front of the vehicle ahead for a safe breaking distance was essential.

A friend of mine used to bring his Model T Ford to the "Park in the Market" classic evening in Greenwich each month. However he began to realise that he and his passengers needed nerves of steel in order to make the urban journey of 10 miles safely . He explained about the need to anticipate the situation ahead by about 30 seconds and plan accordingly. However in urban traffic it was often impossible to achieve this, as London motorists are a pretty impatient bunch, and would never make allowances for the older vehicle.

On a much later front another friend owns a couple of air-cooled VWs with drum brakes, he is now coming to the conclusion that he just cannot risk driving on faster roads because , despite allowing a sufficient gap , there is always some impatient driver using the larger gap to overtake and he has to keep falling back to preserve the braking distance he needs from speed. He could of course convert to front disc brakes , but that destroys the originality of two very nice examples of 60s motoring (Beetle and Variant)

All the above explains why I oft get up around dawn on a Sunday morning and head out for an enjoyable hour or two`s drive on my local (ish) roads though you have to keep a weather eye peeled for the wildlife... In the +8 the exhaust note, at least provides a degree of advanced warning.. a tad less so than it`s more modern substitute, which has slightly better braking performance and which a deer put to the test..!!!

The earlier one snapped at a local village evening meet had a tap on the cylinder head to reduce compression ratio and so aid starting. Despite numerous folk watching it started first turn of the handle

Lovely modest chap who owned it, probably in his 80's!