Dubonnet's Xenia

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When you’re the scion of a famous apéritif family, you may be anything you wish – playboy, dandy, eccentric or general bon vivant – but you should not be boring. André Dubonnet surpassed all that was expected. It was normal that a gentleman of his pedigree should dabble with exotic cars, but Dubonnet created the single most spectacular car ever.

He had a long association with Hispano-Suiza and a keen engineering mind, so he was always welcome at the Bois-Colombes works. Alongside Gustave Chedru, he produced an astonishingly complex four-wheel independent suspension system which was a feature of two show-stealing prototypes which appeared at the 1932 Paris Salon. He christened them Xenia after his new bride.

Later in the decade, Dubonnet wanted a new car for his personal use. He fancied something in the popular streamlining idiom, so he took one of the old Xenia chassis and some designs from Jean Andreau, who tested a model in the wind tunnel, and then left it to Saoutchik to make Andreau’s otherworldly design a reality, complete with cantilevered parallel doors.

It should have stopped the world in its tracks, but the Third Reich had other ideas. Apart from one high-profile appearance in 1946, the dashing Xenia disappeared from the public eye until the 1980s, since when it has been a source of awe and intrigue at concours the world over.

After decades of admiring the car from afar, Mick Walsh’s dreams come true when he takes the wheel in the January issue of The Automobile, on sale now.

Words by Zack Stiling
Photographs by Tony Baker

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