Vintage Thing No.55 - the Darmot or Darmont three wheeler

As part of this Le Mans event, Morgan were the featured marque at the British Sports Car Welcome at St Saturnin. Among the British Mogs was this French one.( Photo by Alan Mansell)

I love the little aerofoil below the sump! It looks like it's highly polished aluminium. According to the accompanying blurb, it had a 1233cc Harley Davidson fitted and "carosserie unique". Some people would decry the use of a modern powerplant but I really like what's been achieved here. And H-D's are not that modern.

I'm no expert on Harley valve cover design but this one doesn't look like a Knucklehead, Panhead or Shovelhead to me. Maybe those are aftermarket items that make this engine more special.

I've always had a weakness for polished aluminium. Unpainted panels like these leave bodges nowhere to hide. This Darmot must be a devil to keep clean but the effect under artifical lighting is fantastic.

The best contract for such shiny panels is a dark colour and that's just what they've used here. This is rolling sculpture shown off at its finest.

Whoever made the bodywork knew what they were doing. My mate Al is a trained shipwright and he found the workmanship behind the diagonal strips of wood on the boat tail simply jaw dropping. And this effect is taken through to the dashboard!

The fish tail exhausts are another nice detail. Brooklands cans were always fishtailed but these tailpipes are much subtler. This Darmot is the kind of souped up Morgan you might get in a parallel universe - except that it's got a French registration - 72 denotes the department of Sarthe which contains the Le Mans circuit.

So what exactly is a Darmot?

Well, it's actually a Darmont.

Morgans had a following in France after World War 1 due to sporting successes in events like the Amiens Cyclecar Grand Prix. Les Freres Darmont began as distributors and then became manufacturers under licence of the Darmont-Morgan in Courbevoie, Seine. These began as quite close replicas with water-cooled Blackburne vee twin engines, which were the engines of choice for Morgan speed merchants back then.

Darmonts gradually took on their own identity and even made copies of the Blackburne engine. G N Georgano states production ran from 1926-30 but some say production only ceased in 1939 when the factory was requisitioned by the invading Germans and so badly damaged that production was not resumed in peace time. Latterly, four wheelers were produced and called Darmont Juniors. More info is available on the Morgan Darmont site.

As standard the Darmont came with two speeds and the Morgan chain transmission. Weight was less than 350 kg so they went like stink and the racing versions, without mudguards and screen to reduce drag, could do 150kmh.

The early ones used chassis tubes as silencers but these soon corroded and the chassis collapsed. In reducing the number of parts, you can take a redundancy matrix too far.

Frédéric Viginier from France has set up a register of all known Darmot three-wheelers and can be contacted through Pre War Car so if you stumble across one just check that he doesn't know about it already.

Roger Darmot was reckoned to be the only guy who made money out of cyclecars in France. Some say this was due to his extortionate prices for spares and specifying, for instance, odd wheel bearings sizes that only he could supply. Andre stuck to racing. They both sound like dudes to me, though.

Darmont were not alone in producing Morgan derived three wheelers in France. The Sandford was an interpretation of the four cylinder Moggy three wheeler and a bit more up market.

So if it isn't a Darmot but a Darmont maybe that's less of a Harley engine, possibly a Hardly-Davidson vee-twin. If the blurb says it's a Harley Culbute maybe that's what it is.

But what's that? I think this is something to do with the valves. Planete Biker mentions culbute in connection with soupapes (a great word for valves) and distribution (distribution). My French-English dictionary says a culbute is a somersault or heavy fall.

If anyone knows for certain, please enlighten me.

None of this stops the Harley Darmont/Darmot being a jewel. Despite their fearsome reputation, vintage Blackburne engines look a bit flimsy to me due to their gangling pushrods. With 60 bhp from 1233cc Harley vee twin, this thing's going to shift and keep shifting reasonably reliably. The Darmont Freres would probably have loved to get their oily hands on an engine like this so I doubt they're revving in their graves over originality.

I just hope those little front brakes are good.