Voisin C20 Mylord - The Art Of The Unexpected (Part 2)

There can be no better illustration than this stunning C20 Simoun Mylord. Gabriel established his Deco credentials in earlier works, notably the 1927 C14 Lumineuse, with cubical storage boxes and rectangular doors, and a near-constant radius to the semi-circular wings. The C20 Mylord, however, took his notions of modular, ‘prismatic’ styling and the elaborately decorative aspects of high Art Deco to their ultimate.

There can be no better illustration than this stunning C20 Simoun Mylord.

And if any doubt exists about the difference between original Art Deco and the movement’s 1930s Streamline Moderne evolution that we offhandedly also call Art Deco, the Mylord should resolve it. The Streamline school kept the precision and color of Deco, but melted its straight lines and perfect circles and blew them into flowing, windswept complex curves. It was in essence Deco warped by speed, and the same Streamline theme seen on the Bugatti Atlantic is evident on the Supermarine Schneider Cup racer and, to a degree, in Voisin’s subsequent Aero-series cars.

The slammed, sexy Mylord, on the other hand, is so decidedly Art Deco it may be not only the best automotive example, but the only real automotive example. There is hardly a compound radius anywhere – the eye is fooled by the repeated right-angles of the passenger box into believing that even the gently arched roofline is one continuous flat surface and the detailing exalts in the mechanical, with exposed equipment featured throughout as objects of beauty.

Voisin didn’t hide the gearbox under a carpet scrap: he put it in a place of honor, naked, for all to see and admire. Other, lesser vehicles would tuck their chassis bits discreetly under bodywork; the Mylord’s front tie-rod is plated and polished and presented with pride, beside the glorious roller chain and bell-crank that take the place of an ordinary cable on the completely dry braking system. Voisin trumpeted his progressive, rational engineering, but he nonetheless resisted hydraulics, buried the batteries under the fuel tank, and ignored his vast aviation knowledge in favor of barn-door aerodynamics. No foolish consistencies for Gabriel.

Incredibly, though, there doesn’t seem to be any given apparatus that doesn’t work and work well, no matter how stylish or individualistic (but not, please, ‘eccentric’; no-one accuses Henry Royce of eccentricity for his own particular brand of unrealistic obsessions). The graceful door handles, for example, drawn by Modernist architect and Voisin owner Le Corbusier, deserve gallery display, and take barely a fingertip pressure and a hair of travel to operate the multiple peg-and-hole locking mechanism.

Voisin didn’t hide the gearbox under a carpet scrap: he put it in a place of honor, naked, for all to see and admire

Gabriel’s tranquility fixation had its benefits as well: his Dynastart mechanism, combining the functions of starter and generator, genuinely does crank the engine without a trace of horrific grind and crash. At idle speed, the V12 is as hushed and vibration free as anything the fanatical Sir Henry imagined; engage first gear (and reverse, by the way, is perversely in the same slot, but just beyond another neutral position) and ease up on the aircraft rudder pedal that controls the clutch, and the car is launched as casually as rolling a tricycle downhill.

Seemingly there are a billion gauges and controls spread across the dash, echoing Voisin’s aviation zeal, just like the pedals and the aluminum that everything that isn’t driveline seems to be made of. Or maybe they’re there to keep the driver awake; once the stiff crash gearbox is massaged into fourth, there isn’t much to do except watch the scenery. The loudest sound is a vacuum hiss upon mashing the brakes, and they work quite nicely too, as does the tight, direct steering. But even with the massively under slung Simoun ‘sport’ chassis, derived from a Voisin speed-record racer, the car has a certain aloof feeling of iceberg inevitability: noticeably more artwork than automobile.

Or maybe they’re there to keep the driver awake; once the stiff crash gearbox is massaged into fourth, there isn’t much to do except watch the scenery.

Admittedly I don’t push the envelope all that much; that would be contrary to the car’s apparent personality and, of the possibly 150 Voisins of all types remaining, there is only this one, single Mylord left in the world and that’s likely by merest luck.

It was introduced at the 1930 Paris Motor Show, it’s thought that only 20 or 30 were built, and nothing is known of our survivor’s background until after it emerged in the late ’40s, allegedly bricked-up behind a Parisian wall to hide it during World War Two, into the care of French automotive journalist Jean Djaniguian. It was brought to the USA in 1950 by enthusiast D Cameron Peck and thereafter went through a number of American collectors, fortuitously and very soon after importation including the Maynard Buchanan family, who were evidently keen amateur photographers.

Their earliest ‘as purchased’ snaps (substantiated by shots of the 1930 Paris specimen) show the car in black and, very interestingly, with mono-color red-ish upholstery, not the geometric patterns of Deco fashion designer Paul Poiret often associated with Voisin interiors.

This was the color scheme selected for the total restoration commissioned by Lee Munder of Florida, which resulted in a 2009 Best of Show at Amelia Island on the car’s rebirth, and is the one it still wears. A year later , it was purchased by Pennsylvania collector John W Rich, before he passed away in December 2011. Our guide, Mark Lizewskie, who generously offered us this close-up experience with the Mylord at Detroit’s celebrated St John’s Concours, is curator of the John W Rich Museum.

A year later , it was purchased by Pennsylvania collector John W Rich, before he passed away in December 2011.

When time comes to drive back to the Concours grounds through mounting afternoon traffic on the main highway , however, discretion becomes the better part of valor and I return the controls to Mark. Driving the camera car in this case is almost as good, especially once I discover the fabulous view in the mirror of the big black machine with the huge flaming headlamps, closing on us like some demonic Deco apparition – an apparition that also seems constantly to keep closing at totally unforeseen rates of speed.

I ask Mark about that the minute we stop at St Johns. ‘Yeah, it’s wild…’ he says, shaking his head, ‘…I’ve never had it out like this before, but when we hit the open road, it was a different car; it suddenly just wanted to take off, to go and go, and I actually had to rein it in…’ He shakes his head again when I once more raised the school girlish hand and… what the hell, call me giddy all you like. The one thing you can expect from a Voisin, of course, is that it will always, always produce the unexpected. Just like its creator.