Blue Chenard & Walcker Y6. Chenard & Walcker cars won first Le Mans 24 hours race in 1923

Blue Chenard & Walcker Y6. Made in 1931 in France. This Chenard & Walcker cars won first Le Mans 24 hours race in 1923.

Weight: 1240 kg

Max speed: 120 km/h

Engine: 2900 cc

Power: 80 HP

Chenard-Walcker, also known as Chenard & Walcker, was a French automobile and commercial vehicle manufacturer from 1898 to 1946. Chenard-Walcker then designed and manufactured trucks marketed via Peugeot sales channels until the 1970s. The factory was at first in Asnières-sur-Seine moving to Gennevilliers in 1906. The make is remembered as the winner of the very first Le Mans 24 Hours Race in 1923.

The company never had sufficient capital to modernise and the cars remained largely hand-built leaving them unable to compete on price. As a result, they went bankrupt in 1936 and were taken over by body maker Chausson. The 1938 models shared bodies with Matford, distinguishable only by the radiator grilles and were powered by Citroën or Ford V-8 engines.

There were plans to rejuvenate (again) the appearance of the big Chenard & Walcker “Aigle 22CV” model for 1939, giving it a raked grille, but this came to nothing and car production finally ceased in 1939 or 1940.

In April 1940, an advertisement for the company’s Matford-based passenger cars appeared in the French-language version of a leading Swiss-based motor magazine but, by this time, the company appears to have been finishing up existing stocks of new cars rather than building more.

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