The Vision of Voisin descends upon the Mullin: Museum hosts world's largest collection of Voisins

December 10, 2012


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Gabriel Voisin was that rarest of automotive figures, someone who comes along once in a lifetime—the cars he built left an indelible mark on today's automobiles. The Mullin Automotive Museum's latest exhibit, La Vision De Voisin, honors Voisin —architect, aviator, racer, and engineering maestro.

“Most people don't even know how to spell Voisin,” said Peter Mullin, whose passion for the Art Deco Movement resulted in one of the most fascinating and beautiful collections of European cars of the 1920s and '30s ever assembled. “But when you do a little bit of homework, Voisin was one of the great prewar marques, done by a man who was an inventor, an unbelievably curious man, and who never quit dreaming about what he was going to do tomorrow rather than what he was doing yesterday.”

The company Avions Voisin may have built over 10,000 cars during its short life, but only 50 of those cars still exist. Mullin's collection of 17 models is the single largest grouping of Voisins ever assembled, ranging from the marque's beginning to the very last voiture Voisin ever built, a C30 S Coupe. Mullin painstakingly acquired these cars one by one—“bird by bird,” he says—with the help of the preservation group, Les Amis de Gabriel Voisin, and the surviving members of Voisin's family. The exhibit opened in November and will run until April 2013, and includes artifacts, drawings, and memorabilia from Voisin's dramatic life.


The Voisin C27 Grand Sport Cabriolet (right) was designed by Figoni et Falaschi. The Laboratoire, not so much. Photo by Blake Z. Rong

Born in 1880, Voisin came of age at a time of great technological advancement. Fortuitous enough to grow up alongside the birth of the airplane, he began his flying experiments in 1904, while the Wright Brothers were still brushing the sand off their first glider. He wasted little time: Just two years later he and his brother, Charles, founded the first airplane manufacturer, Société Anonyme des Aéroplanes G. Voisin. A year after that, les frères Voisin built Europe's first manned airplane; a year after that—January 13, 1908, the Voisin-Farman I won the Grand Prix de l'Aviation by taking off, flying one kilometer, and landing—all under its own power.

To most Europeans, the Wright Brothers may have bested Voisin to powered flight, but they were a myth; Kitty Hawk might just as well have been on a different planet. Voisin brought the accomplishment of powered flight to Europe and sparked an arms race of innovation between early pioneers: farther distances, faster records and greater heights, all in more sophisticated machinery.

Then the war broke out.

World War I was good to Voisin financially—in those bold, reckless days of nascent aviation, his biplanes were used in everything from ground attacks to bombing runs to being the first to shoot down enemy aircraft. Voisin gave the royalty to build his airplanes to France for free, because he felt that would be for the good of the nation. (A replica 1907 biplane will be shown at the Mullin; a real one hangs at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum.)

But Voisin was horrified by war and the destruction caused by his airplanes, and when the Great War ended he turned his attention to the motor car. His new company, Avions Voisin, was founded at a time when the automobile, much like the airplane industry, was ready to to rise into the realm of unparalleled technological advancement. But Voisin's cars took a while to enter into the realm of Art-Deco-cool, of sans-serif fonts and long, sleek hood ornaments—compare the earlier C1 and C3 limousines, otherwise unremarkable-looking touring bodies on imposing chassis. But underneath was evidence of genius—a genius who had the foresight to complement his creativity with brilliant engineers such as André Lefèbvre, who worked extensively with Voisin and later developed Citroën's most influential models.

Voisin favored the sleeve-valve engines built by Charles Knight in America, which were first sold to Citroën, then passed to Voisin when the former deemed the engine too luxurious. It would be one of many intertwined affairs between the two marques. Voisin refined the Knight engine to be silky smooth with magnificent quietness, adding to the car's mystique. ABS was a purely aviation technology first invented by Voisin himself, then adapted from airplane to car. Voisin's extensive use of aluminum bodywork caught up with him during the next conflict: most of the 1,795 C14 models were salvaged for their aluminum during World War II, rendering Mullin's model at the museum a unique proposition. Later Voisins had delicate struts appending the fenders to the grille, minimizing fender shake over France's rough roads and recalling the wing struts of biplanes. The bizarre grey upholstery, recalling arctic camouflage or dazzle paint, was recreated on the Pebble-winning C-25 Aerodyne, using the same loom from the 1930s.

“Voisin usually designed his own cars and bodies,” said Mullin, “so if you wanted a Voisin, you got his body and his own car. But he loved Figoni et Falaschi. So he allowed them to buy a chassis and design their own body. They're both C27s, and the Paris Exhibition car, bought by the Shah of Iran—looks like a Type 55 Bugatti.”


The Voisin C28 Aerosport is on loan from the Arturo Keller family and is cooler than you. Photo by Blake Z. Rong

Avions Voisin seemingly leapfrogged over the Depression by crafting its finest work during the world's bleakest days. The C25 Aerodyne, with which Peter Mullin won Best of Show at Pebble Beach, lives up to its airplane name with a beautifully rational fastback, bullet-straight headlights mounted way down low somewhere, and that tall, gorgeous winged hood ornament rising out of the grille like a miniature Eiffel Tower. The Louis Dubos-built C30 Cabriolet is elegant in a classical American way, even slightly cartoonish—it was so stunning that the Nazis cruised around occupied Paris in it, having deemed it too special to destroy.

Voisin wanted to make the C28 perform better, but couldn't fit a more powerful Knight engine—it displaces just 3.3 liters. So he turned to the black art that was aerodynamics. The result is the astonishing C28 Aerosport, the car that, in true French tradition, was genuinely ahead of its time, soaring toward the realm of the modern car. The fenders meld into the body. The headlights rise up above the bumpers—what little thin strips of chrome they already are. The windows are cut into such gun slits that they make the contemporary Camaro's narrow glasswork resemble the Sydney Opera House. The front grille smacks of Gothic architecture. Where the Talbot-Lago T150C is curvaceous, the Aerosport is rational; where the Bugatti Type 57 Atlantic is a bit phallic, the Aerosport is slab-sided and dramatic, and therefore utterly, supremely wonderful. Only four were built—just one survives.

We asked Brittanie Kinch, the curator of the Voisin exhibit, what she finds so compelling about Voisin. Young and wildly enthusiastic, she learned more about Voisin in her time working alongside Peter Mullin than, presumably, most Gallic boulevardiers ever knew.

“I've really gotten to know this guy personally, even though I'm never ever going to meet him,” said Kinch. “He's a unique character who struggled constantly with the fact that he wasn't really noticed for being one of the earliest fathers of aviation. A lot of people don't know about that. So this is our opportunity to introduce Gabriel Voisin in his own words, in the context of this incredibly innovative, striking Art Deco period.

“Every single one of those pages in all of his manuals is the personal story of Voisin. He thought that everything needed to be drawn meticulously by the engineer himself in order to correctly visualize what the design was. And if you didn't do that, then you were failing as a designer.”


Voisin chose the Scarab of Khepri as one of its symbols, flanked by the winged Icarus. Photo by Blake Z. Rong

Voisin was a Renaissance man, a humanist at heart. He was terrible with money and went broke multiple times. When he was up, he was up; when he was down, his friends and associates saved him. After the war, and out of a need for affordable, basic transportation, he built the Biscuter—as dramatic a departure from his earlier creations as the Smart Fortwo differs from the 1971 Citroën SM Présidentielle Décapotable. And at least he had the good sense to let Lefèbvre go when he saw that Avions Voisin wasn't doing so well and Gabriel couldn't afford to keep him—Lefèbvre, of course, went on to change the world with the Citroën 2CV, which just happens to bear more than a design and philosophical resemblance to the earlier Biscuter.

Voisin wasn't envious of his protégé's success. He was proud, in fact: How could he be mad at a man whom he called his “spiritual son”? Avions Voisin went out of business soon after World War II, but Voisin went on to consult and design for many other companies until his death on Christmas Day 1973—always thinking, conjuring and asking questions.

“It's a very interesting life of a classic dreamer, inventor and creator,” said Mullin, “and he didn't pay a lot of attention to whether his checkbook bounced. Classic right-brained activity.”

Perhaps Voisin's head was, rather appropriately, in the clouds.

La Vision de Voisin runs until April 2013. To purchase tickets to the Mullin Automotive Museum, click here. Exhibit times at the Mullin are varied—think of it as an event.