De Cézac

Automobiles de Cézac was a small Périgueux manufacturer conventionally dated from 1922 to 1927. Its exact legal form and founder have not been recovered; local oral history attributes it broadly to the de Cézac family associated with Ajat, not to a securely named individual. The works stood at 61 rue Victor-Hugo near rue Kléber. A carriage workshop on the site was remembered as a separate earlier concern and does not extend the automobile marque. A 1987 interview preserved by the Archives départementales de la Dordogne recalls experiments beginning in 1919 and commercialization from 1921 to 1930, but these retrospective dates conflict with the 1922–27 range in standard automobile references, Wikidata and AllCarIndex. A 1921 De Cézac advertisement concerned resale of a Ford van and proves motor-trade activity rather than own-car manufacture; an invitation to the marque's stand at the 1923 Bordeaux Fair and a 1924 Chausson radiator advertisement provide direct evidence for its cars. The workshop reportedly employed twenty to twenty-five people and completed roughly two cars per month. It fabricated chassis, gearboxes, shafts and gears locally while buying engines. The first family offered Ballot four-cylinder choices of 1,590 or 1,685 cc with touring, saloon and coupé coachwork. A smaller 1,202 cc CIME-engined model joined in 1925. Engine choices within the first family are variants rather than nameplates. Cars were individually bodied; a pointed-tail torpedo for the Georges family was bespoke coachwork, not a racer. A restored 1925 CIME-powered camionnette built for a blacksmith is believed to be the sole survivor, but its commercial body and retrospective 10 CV label do not create another model. No complete ledger, factory type names, prices, dimensions, engine outputs, serial sequence or competition record survives. Two descriptive rows—the Ballot-Engined Model and CIME-Engined Small Model—exhaust the secure range. Ballot, CIME, Chausson, neighboring Cyrano and the earlier carriage shop retain separate identities.

Text adapted from “De Cézac” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗