Book of the month
Marcel Pourtout, Carrossier
JON PRESSNELL, Dalton Watson, £110, ISBN 978 1 85443 286 5
As coachbuilders go, Pourtout was far from being one of the biggest and yet it was an amazing survivor, in business from 1925 until 1994. Even today, one of the Pourtout descendants keeps the family trade alive with a small body repair shop in the Parisian suburb of Rueil-Malmaison, to where the carrosserie moved in 1936.
Pourtout is best remembered today for its glory years in the 1930s, when it employed the talented Georges Paulin as its designer. This was the era of the stylish Peugeot Darl’mat roadsters and coupés, and luxury commissions such as the spectacular Delage D8-120s and the Embiricos Bentley. It’s amusing to learn that Paulin worked only part-time as a designer, having qualified as a dental surgeon – it seems that dentistry brought in
