No. 39, now in collection Heuliez
28 May 2012
The carriage of the M35 was built at Heuliez in Cerizay. They were very proud of it, given the prominent photos in their corporate presentations from that time. M. Heuliez himself wanted to drive one himself, it became number 39.
A friend has recently visited Heuliez and has been able to take some (detail) photos. On the ground not much could be told about history, but on the basis of a number of things we saw and already had in our possession, we can trace back the early history.
On the Carte Grise the car was named UN Vehicle Neuf on February 27, 1970. On the windshield you can find a tax sticker of the season '72/'73. He probably drove his 87,000 km during that period. The bare carriages went from Heuliez to the Citroën factory in Rennes, where the Ami was also built. There the M35s were sprayed and finished. This car was originally gray and sprayed blue at some point, the favourite color of M. Heuliez.
The picture shows the grey colour.
No. 39 has known better times. At the moment the front is loose and the car is not driving. The pictures below show that it is stored rather tight, together with other cars from the collection, in the spray street where until recently Opel Tigra Twintops were sprayed.
Since Heuliez focuses mainly on survival in the future, she will soon be saying goodbye to her history. A large part of the collection will be sold in July 2012. As soon as we know more about it, we'll be reporting more about it.
More pictures of the collection can be found at;http://thisnotamethod.wordpress.com/2010/08/01/heuliophotos/
More information about the auction at;http://www.artcural.com/fr/departments/automobiles et automomobilia/lmc2012.asp