This is an injustice. If we talk a lot about the first electric car to exceed 100 km/h, the famous Jamais contente, on display this weekend, we never mention the Jeantaud Duc. However, it holds the first duly approved world record, which did not prevent it from falling into the abyss of automobile history, just like its designer.
And yet, he didn’t let Charles Janteaud fool him. Le Limougeaud, born in 1843, went to Paris at the age of 16 to follow his father’s path and become a coachbuilder in his turn. He puts himself at the service of several houses located in the Champs-Élysées district, a mecca for the fledgling automobile industry. For around twenty years, he continued on his merry way, inventing systems for changing gears, suspensions and axles.
The automobile will be electric or it will not be
But in 1880, it clicked: the future would be electric. A German industrialist develops an internal combustion engine? A joke. Janteaud, surrounded by a few friends including engineers Camille-Alphonse Faure and Gustave Trouvé, set out and created an electric car. A year later, his Tillbury, as he named it, was ready, with its twenty Fulmen batteries. But after only 100 m, it burns completely and its inventor becomes the laughing stock of the neighborhood.
No problem, Jeantaud returns to his workshop. His new Tillbury was ready and in 1895, to prove that it was reliable, he entered it in the Paris-Bordeaux-Paris race. The car has 7 horsepower and this time it is stuffed with 38 batteries of 15 kg each. With its autonomy of only 50 km, which allows it to travel between 20 and 30 km/h, it is necessary to have spare batteries throughout the journey. No matter: he rushes. But in Orléans, the race ends for him. The Tillbury is stationary, but its electric propulsion is not the cause, one of its axles has failed.
Once again, the inventor returns to his drawing board, which he leaves three years later with a machine that would have entered the record books if it had existed. And not just because of its design, since the Duc, that’s its curious name, is the first car with a streamlined design. Above all, Jeantaud is convinced that it is the fastest of all. That’s good, in this year 1898, a very official approval committee was created. Record attempts are multiplying and, as everyone claims theirs on the good faith of a brother-in-law or a cousin who witnessed the scene, the new committee will put things in order.
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For this record attempt, Jeanteaud does not take the wheel. He entrusted it, not to a duke, but to a count: Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat. The approval committee, Jeantaud, his car and the aristocrat met on December 18 of this year, 1898 in the agricultural park of the Achères plain in Yvelines, whose main driveway, the Walnut Road, was sufficiently long to accommodate the acceleration of the car. And very quickly, the verdict falls: 63.15 km/h. It’s a world record.
But Jeantaud’s joy will be short-lived, because his sworn enemy is keeping watch. 6 months later, Camille Jenatzy challenges him. The two men have been competing in car races for years but the creator of the Jamais Contente cannot stand the fact that his rival holds the title of world champion. The two cars and their creators therefore met again, still in Achères, on April 29, 1899.
Killed by carbon monoxide
The rest, we know it: the Jamais contente enters history for a few more km/h. However, the Duc has improved and now reaches 92 km/h. But that’s not enough. Jenatzy’s car exceeded the symbolic 100 km/h mark for the first time that day. It will be approved at 105.879 km/h, exactly. One record chases the other and Jeanteaud like his Duke falls into oblivion.
The man continued to manage his cab and electric hearse business, but the internal combustion engine reared its ugly head and in 1905, the Janteaud establishments went bankrupt. Their founder survived a short year, but on November 29, 1906, in his office at 54 rue de Ponthieu in Paris, Charles Janteaud blocked the pipes of the coal stove. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning. This same carbon that also emits the thermal engines which have been the skin of his company.
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