Talbot Lago Record

As part of the backwash from the bankruptcy and break-up of the Anglo-French Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq combine in 1935, the French part of the business was purchased by Tony Lago, an auto-industry entrepreneur and engineer born in Venice, but who had built much of his auto-industry career during the 1920s in England. The registered name of the company Lago now owned was "Automobiles Talbot-Darracq S.A.", but in the English speaking world it is generally known as "Talbot-Lago". The cars themselves were badged in their home market simply as Talbots, using the badge worn by products of the predecessor company since 1922 (when the "-Darracq" suffix had been dropped from the names used for the cars in France). Nevertheless, after 1945, sources even in France frequently used some form of the "Talbot-Lago" name combination.

After acquiring the company in 1935, Lago rapidly developed a range of executive and sporting cars with engine sizes ranging from 2.0 to 4.0 litres. The passenger car range was complemented by racing cars and a high-profile motor racing programme. The Talbot Lago-Record Type T26 launched in 1946, relatively quickly after the end of the Second World War, closely resembled models from the 1930s such as the Talbot Major and Talbot Baby and benefited from the reputation Talbots had built up in the prewar years, though the economic conditions made it unrealistic to produce the range of standard and special-bodied Talbots that had been a feature of the previous decade. The company's star engineer, Walter Becchia, transferred to Citroën at the start of the war, but Tony Lago was joined in 1942 by another exceptional engineering talent, Carlo Marchetti, and from then the two of them were working on the twin-camshaft 4483 cc six-cylinder unit that would lie at the heart of the Talbot T26.

The French government that came to power in 1945 had a strong belief in political control of the economy. In addition to creating a taxation regime which savagely penalised cars with engine sizes above 2 litres, the government also introduced in January 1946 the so-called Pons Plan, under which different French automakers were told by government what car types they might build. Since government also controlled materials supplies – notably steel supplies – the Pons Plan could not be ignored. Talbot were not forbidden to build cars, but they, along with Hotchkiss and Delahaye-Delage were restricted to a class entitled by the bureaucrats "véhicules de classe exceptionnelle" – high-class vehicles. Plan implementation was at its most rigid in 1946, and in that year Talbot received government authorisation for the construction of an initial batch of 125 cars, provided the cars were exported.

The Talbot Lago-Record Type T26 was first presented in public in 1946.

The Talbot Lago Record T26 was a large car with a fiscal horsepower of 26 CV and a claimed actual power output of 170 hp, delivered to the rear wheels via a four-speed Wilson pre-selector gear box, and supporting a claimed top speed of 170 km/h (105 mph). Almost all the Talbot sedans sold during the late 1940s came with Talbot bodies, constructed in the manufacturer's extensive workshops, and the car was commonly sold as a two door "coach" or four-door sedan, but a two-door cabriolet was also offered. There were also a few coachbuilt specials produced with bodywork by traditionalist firms such as Graber.^[1]