Panhard took over a woodworking-machinery workshop in 1867, and nothing marked him out for the motor car: it was his partner Levassor who pushed the firm towards the internal combustion engine. In 1891, their car broke with the motorised cabs: engine at the front, clutch, gearbox, drive to the rear wheels. It would be the world standard until the 1970s.
The story
An engineer trained at the École centrale, René Panhard went into partnership in 1867 with Jules Périn, a Paris maker of woodworking machinery, and took sole charge of the firm on Périn's death, in 1886. Nothing marked him out for the motor car: it was his partner and fellow graduate Émile Levassor who pushed the business towards the internal combustion engine.
The French licence to Gottlieb Daimler's patents belonged to a lawyer, Édouard Sarazin; on his death his widow Louise carried it to the workshop — and married Levassor. In 1891 the workshop on the avenue d'Ivry turned out a car whose layout broke with the motorised cabs of the day: the engine moved to the front, followed by a clutch, a gearbox and drive to the rear wheels. Levassor summed up the invention in a phrase still quoted today — “it is brutal, but it works”. This would be the Panhard layout, the world standard until the 1970s.
The proof was made in racing. In 1895 Levassor came in first at the end of the 1,178 kilometres of Paris-Bordeaux-Paris, forty-eight hours almost without leaving the wheel — but the first prize went to a Peugeot that finished fourth, because the rules demanded four seats. The following year a racing accident injured him; he died of it in 1897, and Panhard carried on alone.
René Panhard died in 1908 and rests in Division 36, in an alley where the grave of Nadar is also to be found. The marque outlived him until 1967, absorbed by Citroën, and then went on as a builder of armoured vehicles.
On site, do not miss
A bourgeois grave without emphasis, a few steps from that of Nadar: two inventors of the century in the same path.
Visitors' questions
Where is René Panhard's grave?
In Division 36 of Père-Lachaise, in the middle of the cemetery. The photographer Nadar — a pioneer too, but of the image and the balloon — rests in the same Division, a few dozen metres away.
Nadar, Division 36What is the Panhard layout?
The arrangement invented in 1891 by Panhard and Levassor: engine at the front, then clutch, gearbox and drive to the rear wheels. It swept away the motorised cab and became the standard architecture of the motor car worldwide for the best part of a century.
Ettore BugattiDid Panhard invent the engine in his cars?
No. The workshop built woodworking machinery; it was his partner Émile Levassor who secured the French licence to the patents of the German Gottlieb Daimler. What Panhard & Levassor did brilliantly was to arrange that engine into a coherent architecture.
Jean-François Cail, engineerDoes the Panhard marque still exist?
Not as a carmaker: production of private cars stopped in 1967, after Citroën absorbed the firm. The name lives on in defence, where Panhard long built light armoured vehicles for the French army.
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