Levassor, Émile

Émile Levassor, (born 1844) configuration of the automobile.

Levassor took over a firm that made woodworking machinery. When René Panhard joined the firm in 1886, the renamed firm of Panhard and Levassor began to make metal-sawing machines as well. Around 1890 Levassor managed to gain control of the French licenses to the automobile engine patents of Gottlieb Daimler. By 1891 Levassor had designed a radically new motorcar to house Daimler’s engine. He broke with tradition by placing the engine in front of the driver rather than under him, thereby obtaining better traction for the steering (front) wheels. He replaced the typical belt drive with a shaft-and-gear transmission that could be selectively engaged with a clutch to give different speed ratios. These and other innovations and existing designs were brilliantly combined by Levassor in the automobiles that his firm started selling in 1892. His vehicles were the first true, if embryonic, automobiles, rather than being simply carriages that had been modified for self-propulsion.

In June 1895 Levassor gave a sensational demonstration of the effectiveness of his design by finishing first in a field of 18 gasoline, steam, and electric motorcars in a race from Paris to Bordeaux and back, a distance of 730 miles (1,200 km). Levassor died of injuries sustained in a race in 1897.