User:Chief tin cloud/Gangloff (coachbuilder)

Planned article by using my own contribution for German WP (also under progress)



Gangloff is the name of several coachbuilding companies in Switzerland and France.

Georges Gangloff, Geneva (1878-1936)


The roots of Carrosserie Georges Gangloff were in the carriage supplying business and date back at least until 1830 when carriage wheels and hubs were manufactured. Out of this business, a carriage making company was established in 1878 by the Gangloff brothers Georges and John, and automobile coachwork followed in 1903. Soon afterwards, they separated, with Georges at the helm of the company which was reorganized as the Georges Gangloff SA, occupying new and larger premises in Geneva-Sécheron.

Subsidiaries were opened in Colmar, France, in 1919, and in Bern, in 1928. The ladder received new premises, were mainly funicural railways, and railway stock was built. A few automobile bodies were built there, though. In 1929, a new subsidiary in Zurich was added by absorbing well-renowned coachbuilders C. & R. Geissberger. Thus, Gangloff became one of the largest company in this business in Switzerland, offering supreme jobs on many classic luxury cars, among them Ansaldo, Cord, Delage, Delahaye, Hispano-Suiza, Hudson and Terraplane, Isotta-Fraschini, Martini, Mercedes-Benz, Minerva, Pic-Pic, or Voisin, to name a few. Further, a few Bugatti got Swiss Gangloff bodies, although most of them were built in the French subsidiary.

In the late 1910s, Georges Gangloff invented a thin B-pillar for four door cars, on which all doors of each side were hinged together. Very thin glass drop frames allowed improved visibility from inside. Further, they gave better looking proportion of lines, and added an airy feeling inside. Designer Frank Spring (1893-1959) learned of this device while working in France, and took it with him when he went to Murphy in Pasadena, California. Murphy improved the system, and called it 'Clear Vision'', offering it on their bodies for Lincoln, Packard, Duesenberg, and other makes.

Gangloff was forced to give up car body production in 1933, due to worse economy, the crash of the bank who financed it, and a failed deal for delivering 50 Lancia bodies. Although the debts were not high, the company was forced into recievership in 1936 because no new financing could be found due to the economic straits in these years.

The Geneva plant was reorganized as the Carrosserie Sécheron (1936-1967) by former Gangloff executives. This company is known having built some convertible bodies for Delahaye, and a few others.

The Bern-based operation was bought-out by Dr. R. von Muralt, who reorganized it as Neue Carrosserie Gangloff AG. It later became the coachbuilding and body repair department of Gangloff AG, where it built many public and trolley bus bodies and truck and trailer coachwork. Gangloff AG today manufactures mainly cabins for aerial cableways and funicural railways and some railway stock.

John Gangloff, Lausanne
After leaving A relative of Georges Gangloff, John Gangloff's establishment was active only from 1909 until 1912. The company did some work on Pic-Pic, and some foreign chassis.

Carrosseries Gangloff, Colmar (1919-1960s)


The automobile coachbuilder most often associated with the Gangloff name is surely Carrosserie Gangloff in Colmar, Alsace, located some 50 kilometres from the Bugatti plant in Molsheim. It was the first branch of Geneva-based Georges Gangloff (opened in 1919), and the only one abroad. The intenton was to come closer to the much larger French market with it's many luxury car builders. This Branch started in demises rented from long-esablished Wiederkehr coachbuilders. In 1927, Gottlieb Moor and Paul Horlacher became responsible for French Gangloff. As Wiederkehr found no successor in his family when he retired n 1930, he sold out to Gangloff, which was reorganized as an independent company then.

Moor and Horlacher had a long and excellent cooperation with Ettore and Jean Bugatti. The Molsheim car makers relied so heavily on Gangloff that they only delivered sketches for the bodies they ordered, leaving final drawing and execution to the coachbuilder. With the introduction of the Type 57, "factory" bodies were offered for the first time by Bugatti. Although an in-house coachbuilding shop was opened aound 1927, it was too small to handle all the orders that came in. So, work was outsourced, and Gangloff was a natural to obtain most of them. At the peak, five hand built bodies per month left Colmar, and Bugatti employees like Grand Prix driver René Dreyfus were kept busy by delivering rolling chassis on the road to Gangloff, taking these transfers as a racing practice.

Gangloff workmanship was always impeccable, so, at last they built more Bugatti Type 57 bodywork than all other independent coachbuilders together. Most of the bodies delivered were "factory" body styles, but orders for specials and strictly one-off styles came in as well. The Jean Bugatti styled Type 57 Stelvio two-passenger convertible in fact was a Gangloff-exclusive which not even was offered by Carrosserie Bugatti. A early Type 57 design by Gangloff was the Grand Raid, a roadster and coupe in which Bugatti was not interrested as they had the Atlantic under development at the time.

After the war, the market for high-class coach built automobiles had practically diminished. Situation in France was even harsher, as de Gaulle introduced high luxury taxes that destroyed those of the prestigious French car manufacturers that had escaped the war. Jean Bugatti had ded in a car accident in 1939, and Ettore in 1947, leaving a company in disarray, and soon in trouble about the way to follow. Gangloff suffered accordingly, without its prime customer and without the chance to gain other

ing was left of the prestigious French

Gangloff AG


Gangloff AG was initially the Bern branch of Georges Gangloff of Geneva, opened in 1928.

is the successor of

The Bern-based operation was later re-organized as Gangloff AG, Carrosseries Gangloff AG now one of it's subsidiaries.

Commercial coachwork
Carrosseries Gangloff AG was heavily involved in the public transport business, with busses, trolley busses and tramways offered together with manufacters like Saurer, FBW, or Volvo. Presently, Gangloff offers a wide range of truck bodies, trailers, and repairs and paints cars an trucks.

V with three bran

]], which still exists as manufacturer of truck and trailer coachwork, railway cars, and cabins for aerial cableways and funicural railways. Gangloff was also a main supplier of public bus coachwork.

The Bern-based operation became the Gangloff AG which still builds truck and trailer coachwork, beside other

railway cars, and cabins for aerial cableways and funicural railways. Gangloff was a main supplier of public bus coachwork for a long period after World War II.

Gangloff Cabins AG
A subsidiary of Gangloff AG, Gangloff Cabins manufactures custom-built cabins and vehicles for railways, lifts, trams, etc. Their last innovation is a two-level funicural airway cabin with an open top. The first of these cabins was installed is Stanserhorn

n open-deck are open-top cabins for The first of these devices that seat "co New Gangloff-cabins to Péclet Funitel in Val Thorens u

To get an idea of what projects we are currently working on, we invite you to read the following:

Weblinks

 * Website Gangloff AG Bern (German, French, partlyy English) (retrieved 11th September 2013)
 * coachbuild.com: Carosseries Gangloff (retrieved 4th February 2013)
 * coachbuilt.com: Walter M. Murphy Co. (retrieved 4th February 2013)
 * coachbuilt.com: Larkins & Co. (retrieved 4th February 2013)
 * coachbuilt.com: Frank Spring (retrieved 4th February 2013)
 * swisscarregister.ch: Georges Gangloff (German) (retrieved 4th February 2013)
 * swisscarregister.ch: John Gangloff (German) (retrieved 4th February 2013)
 * swisscarregister.ch: C. & R. Geissberger (German) (retrieved 4th February 2013)
 * Bonhams Auktionen: Paris Expo, Porte de Versailles Automobiles d'Exception, 9. Februar 2008: Lot Nr, 168; Bugatti Type 57 Coach Gangloff, Chassis Nr. 57546 (retrieved 4th February 2013)
 * zwischengas.com: Swiss Car Register mit Gangloff Sonderschau am OTM Fribourg (German) (retrieved 11th September 2013)
 * (German) (retrieved 11th September 2013)