Ailloud

Ailloud was the Lyon vehicle identity established by cycle maker Claude Ailloud in 1897. The works combined bicycle production with an early attempt at automobile construction and presented a vehicle at the Lyon cycle and automobile exhibition in December 1899, where one example received a silver medal. The first documented Ailloud car used a 618 cc air-cooled twin-cylinder engine mounted at the rear, a three-speed gearbox and chain drive to the rear axle on a tubular frame. The engine was later moved to the front to improve cooling, but accessible references do not establish a separate type designation, exact changeover date, body catalogue or number of front-engined cars. One source says roughly twenty automobiles were produced overall; another says probably only one of the earliest car was made. Those claims may describe different stages of the program and are retained as a disclosed conflict rather than allocated to invented models. In 1900 Claude Ailloud joined Francisque Dumond to form Automobiles Ailloud & Dumond, a related but separately named Lyon marque with its own two-cylinder cars, De Dion-Bouton-engined tricycles and a later one-off four-cylinder. Those products are not folded into the plain Ailloud row. Ailloud's own automobile production ended in 1900, while cycles, the partnership and subsequent garage activity remain related history. One 618 cc Twin-Cylinder Voiturette family therefore exhausts the defensible plain-Ailloud automobile range.

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