Facel Vega 1964

Prominent owners of Facel Vegas (mainly of Facel IIs) included Pablo Picasso, Ava Gardner, Christian Dior, Joan Collins, Joan Fontaine, Stirling Moss, Tony Curtis, several Saudi princesses, The President of Mexico, Robert Wagner, Anthony Quinn, Debbie Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, Brian Rix and French Embassies around the world.

Facel was a French manufacturer of automobiles from 1954 to 1964. The company was named after the original metal stamping company FACEL, and the company’s first model, the Vega, named after the star, was introduced at the 1954 Paris Auto Show. The cars were advertised with the slogan For the Few Who Own the Finest. Initially successful, the company failed after the debut of its mechanically troubled Facellia model. In 1960, Facel entered the sports car market with the Facellia, a small car similar in size to the then popular Mercedes 190 SL. Facellias were advertised in three body styles: cabriolet, 2+2 coupe and 4-seat coupe — all with the same mechanicals and a 2,450 mm wheelbase. With the idea of creating a mass-produced all-French sports car competing with the Alfa Romeos, Facel moved away from American engines. The Facellia had a 4 cylinder 1.6 L DOHC engine built in France by Paul Cavallier of the Pont-a-Mousson company (which already provided manual gear boxes for the company’s larger models). The engine had only two bearings supporting each camshaft, using special steels, as opposed to the usual four or five. Despite the metallurgical experience of Pont-a-Mousson, this resulted in excessive flex, timing problems and frequent failures. The troublesome engine was replaced with a Volvo B18 power plant in the Facel III, but the damage was done. Production was stopped in 1963 and despite the vision of it being a “volume“ car, only 1100 were produced, which is Facel’s highest production number. Facel left the car market completely in 1964. Prominent owners of Facel Vegas (mainly of Facel IIs) included Pablo Picasso, Ava Gardner, Christian Dior, Joan Collins, Joan Fontaine, Stirling Moss, Tony Curtis, several Saudi princesses, The President of Mexico, Robert Wagner, Anthony Quinn, Debbie Reynolds, Frank Sinatra, Brian Rix and French Embassies around the world. The French writer Albert Camus died in a Facel Vega FV3B driven by his publisher, Michel Gallimard. At the time of his death, Camus had planned to travel by train, with his wife and children, but at the last minute accepted his publisher’s proposal to travel with him. A Facel Vega HK500 appears in computer-animated form in the film Ratatouille (Pixar, 2007), driven by one of the main characters. This car has covered 75,746 km.