- Founded
- 1921 – 1957
- Headquarters
- Bourg-la-Reine, France
René, Robert and Roger Bernardet began building sidecars at Bourg-la-Reine in 1921 and formalized Établissements Bernardet Frères in 1932. Alongside the sidecar business they completed a 750 cc front-drive two-seater in 1933 and, with Giuseppe Remondini, a 1.5-litre transverse-engine independently suspended prototype in 1937. A small-car program begun before the war resumed in 1946 at the firm's Châtillon factory. Its 800 cc flat-four front-drive cars combined a structural chassis-shell, bolt-on body panels, a removable power unit and, on the show car, Labourdette's pillarless Vutotal windscreen. A cabriolet and larger hardtop sedan drew orders at Paris, Geneva and Brussels, but postwar material controls prevented series manufacture and deposits were refunded. Further experiments included a Marcel Violet Formula 3 voiturette and a 748 cc final-generation car shown at Geneva in 1950. Bernardet instead concentrated on scooters from 1947; the later Bernardet-Le Poulain concern failed amid stronger Italian competition and entered liquidation in 1957. The automobile catalog excludes Bernardet's far larger sidecar and scooter ranges and also excludes its 1921 custom body on an Amilcar chassis.
Text adapted from “Automobiles Bernardet” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗