"Antoine Kriéger and my grandfather Gustave Tzaut"

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We received a message from Monsieur Jean-Claude Reboul from l’Étang la Ville near Versailles. He responded to What is it? Quiz #407 we published back in November 2015.

The text with the clues we published earlier: Well that's a real cyclecar isn't it? And yes it is of French origin. Created by somebody who was involved with a famous double named French automobile concern. The car employs one of the well-known four-pot engines as seen in many other swift-ish light cars of that time. As you can conclude from the acetylene headlights, well er... headlights, eh main lights, this is an early specimen. Nevertheless, it also has a nicely embodied position(?) or sidelights(?). And be sure not to overlook the lovely radiator fan, not to mention the horn. Yes, we envy this young chap about to take off for a nice autumn drive out. It won't help you a lot as you still have to solve this gruesome questions. Year, make, type and whatever you can come up with to show off your knowledge about this nice little oddball.

A week later the About Quiz #407: La Gazelle was published: In quiz #407 we gave you three clues. There was a photo of a voiturette and the description of this car but we also gave a clue about the builder: that was a monsieur Tzaut who had worked for Clément-Bayard. However – and here it starts to get confusing – M. Tzaut has not been the builder of the car in the picture... M. Tzaut, from Courbevoie near Paris - showed his La Gazelle small car at the 1913 Salon. It was completely conventional and like many other voiturettes of that time. Tzaut did some racing in his car but it seems that the Great War ended his car production.

At about the same time the prolific inventor Octave Poignard offered his La Gazelle for sale, hundreds of kilometres from Paris in the small town of Brinon-sur-Sauldre. There is no evidence that Tzaut and Poignard knew each other. Poignard had built an aeroplane around 1909 but it didn’t fly very well and he turned to automobiles (and other machines). Two leaflets from his (small) company have survived. One shows a 5-7 HP model with a friction transmission that has also been used by some other carmakers, like the American Metz. However, the 6-8 HP model, also with an engine built by Poignard himself, had a unique transmission system with eight speeds! It also used friction but Poignard claimed that here there was no skidding and thus no loss of energy.

We think the 5-7 HP model is from about 1912 and the 6-8 HP (the car in this picture, perhaps with the inventor himself) must be of 1914 or perhaps of 1919 when Poignard had taken up his automotive activities again. It is said that Octave was an excellent technician but a poor businessman and we can imagine that he has never sold many, or any, of his cars. So ‘La Gazelle’ was the make we were looking for. Maybe this time it was too confusing as we mixed up two different makes. But on the other hand: both names were correct... No correct answers came in so no winner this time.

You are probably wondering why all these details are so important. Let`s go back to Jean-Claude. He told us that, Monsieur Gustave Tzaut we mentioned in the about what is it quiz was his mother’s father! He wrote to us: “I knew him before he died in 1944. He was a Swiss man, born near Lausanne and left his country in 1891, when he was 20 years old, for the USA where he bought land to an American irrigation company in Loving, near Carlsbad, NewMexico State. He then moved to Schenectady (NY State) where he worked for the new Thomas Edison’s General Electric Company.

In 1901, he went back to Europe, establishing in Neuilly sur Seine (France, Paris suburb), near the different places where the French automobile industry was located. Here started his connexion with the automobile environment when France was a leader in this industry. The first job he got in France was the Compagnie des Voitures Parisiennes, founded by Louis Antoine Kriéger, specialized in electric cars, one of the best-known companies in this domain. He then worked for Clément Bayard, as the quiz mentioned, as a designer and he then worked on his own car that he presented in 1913 at the Salon de l’Auto de Paris.

In the picture, you see Antoine Kriéger and my grandfather Gustave Tzaut (grandfather behind). This is not the Gazelle but a ‘basic version’ of a car built by the Kriéger Company on which Gustave worked. This model, especially equipped, won the Paris Chatellerault race, 307 km without recharging the batteries. A world record at that time …not really beaten today!”

How wonderful is that! Now Jean-Claude is writing a story about his grandfather. He was willing to share some family documents with us that are left by his mother. For the story, there are still some things which remain unknown. As Jean Claude has never heard of Octave Poignard we mentioned in the quiz. Is there anyone who can tell us more about him? Besides this, he has another question. Jean-Claude is looking for someone who can tell him more about Tzaut’s la Gazelle or knows someone involved with Gazelle. He is for instance interested to find out more about “the location of the making of the car (Courbevoie?) and the number of cars produced.”

We hope to bring Jean-Claude in contact with a very knowledgeable PreWarCar.com enthusiast who can help him with information about his grandfather, Monsieur Gustave Tzaut and La Gazelle.

Words by the editor. Pictures sent in by Jean-Claude Reboul.

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