Cornu

Cornu was the automobile marque associated with inventor Paul Cornu and his father Jules at Lisieux in Calvados. Jules operated a transport and repair business, and Paul developed mechanical devices in the family workshop before becoming famous in rotary-wing aviation. A family photograph documents father and son aboard the ultralight voiturette they designed and built in 1904. Standard automobile encyclopedias date production or commercial activity from 1905 through 1908 under the Cornu name. Only one vehicle architecture is known. Instead of a conventional multi-cylinder engine and differential, it carried two separate Buchet single-cylinder gasoline engines. Belts transmitted their power independently to the two rear wheels. This unusual arrangement potentially simplified the final drive but raises unanswered questions about engine synchronization, speed control and steering behavior; no speculative mechanism is supplied. A maximum speed of 80 km/h is consistently repeated, remarkable for so light and unconventional a machine. No dependable engine displacement, individual or combined horsepower, cooling, ignition, carburetion, clutch, gear ratios, brake system, suspension, steering design, wheelbase, dimensions, weight, price, output total, serial range, customer list or authenticated survivor is publicly documented. A specialist early-French-production survey confirms 1905–08 activity in unknown quantity, while the 1904 photograph provides stronger evidence for the prototype's existence than production totals. One Twin-Buchet Voiturette row therefore exhausts the marque's automobile range and transparently spans prototype construction through reported commercial activity. Paul Cornu subsequently concentrated on vertical flight. Using an Antoinette V8, his twin-rotor experimental helicopter made the historically celebrated manned free-flight attempt in November 1907. That aviation work overlapped the final automobile years but is inventor history, not a Cornu car model. The company should not be confused with modern garages or industrial firms carrying the common Cornu surname, nor with Cournil, the later French four-wheel-drive maker.

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