Georges Paulin #CarDesignerSeries

Georges Paulin was born in 1902 in a working class section of Paris and during his lifetime he was a dentist, part-time automobile designer and hero of the French Resistance during the Second World War. What did you say you’ve done today?

He was the designer for French coachbuilder Marcel Pourtout between 1934 and 1938 and among his creations we can find a Panhard coupe, a Unic cabriolet, a Delage D8, the “teardrop” Talbot-Lago (one of my all time favourites car) and the Darl’mat Peugeot roadsters used in 1937 and 1938 at Le Mans.

Richard Adatto, author of a book on French aerodynamic styling of the era said: “Paulin became the leading French stylist of the time…Everything he touched was designed with aerodynamics in mind. He was very conscious of fuel efficiencies and the aerodynamic efficiencies that could be created by the lines of the car. You could go faster, which meant you could put a smaller engine in the car and it could go faster even though it was a small car” and there’s no doubt about it, even Bugatti copied the Talbot Lago design!

Among other stuff he did it’s the first retractable hardtop called the “Eclipse roof”, which he created in collaboration with Pourtout and Emile Darl’mat, but was ultimately patented by him in 1931 and used for the first time in 1934 on the Peugeot 402BL Éclipse Décapotable.

Carrosserie Pourtout produced Eclipse versions of the Peugeot 301, 401, 402 and 601, the Lancia Belna, and models from Hotchkiss and Panhard.

In 1937, Paulin was given a commission by Rolls-Royce to design a Bentley for André M. Embiricos, a Greek banker and ship builder living in Paris. The result, the 1938 Embiricos Bentley, one of the most recognized of Paulin’s designs.

From 1938 to 1939 he worked exclusively for Rolls-Royce-Bentley, for which he designed the Corniche 1 in 1939 and the Comet Competition.

In July 1940, while he was an engineer at Avions Kellner-Béchereau, Georges Paulin began working with British Intelligence to fight the Nazis. Discovered by the Gestapo thanks to French Vichy elements he was arrested in 1941 and condemned to death by a German military tribunal. He was executed March 1942. An escape plan had been arranged by the British, but Paulin declined to use it, and sacrificed himself in order to protect his team.

He was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Médaille de la Résistance by the French government.

What car designer would you like to be featured next?