page_title: Talbot Lago Record
section_title: Background and launch
hierarchical_section_title: Talbot Lago Record / Background and launch
caption_attribution_description: Une Talbot Lago T26 record cabriolet de 1947.
context_page_description: The Talbot Lago-Record Type T26 was a large, six-cylinder executive car launched by the French Talbot company in 1946. In the context of the company's protracted financial collapse, the last T26s were probably those produced during 1953.
  Steel-bodied four- and two-door sedans and coupes were offered. Numerous coach builders also offered bespoke bodies for the car, although in the economically constrained conditions of the time, relatively few were built.
  There was also a shortened sports version known as the Talbot Lago-Grand Sport Type T26
context_section_description: As part of the backwash from the bankruptcy and break-up of the Anglo-French Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq combine in 1935, the French part of the business was purchased by Tony Lago, an auto-industry entrepreneur and engineer born in Venice, but who had built much of his auto-industry career during the 1920s in England. The registered name of the company Lago now owned was "Automobiles Talbot-Darracq S.A.", but in the English speaking world it is generally known as "Talbot-Lago". The cars themselves were badged in their home market simply as Talbots, using the badge worn by products of the predecessor company since 1922 (when the "-Darracq" suffix had been dropped from the names used for the cars in France). Nevertheless, after 1945, sources even in France frequently used some form of the "Talbot-Lago" name combination.
  After acquiring the company in 1935, Lago rapidly developed a range of executive and sporting cars with engine sizes ranging from 2.0 to 4.0 litres. The passenger car range was complemented by racing cars and a high-profile motor racing programme. The Talbot Lago-Record Type T26 launched in 1946, relatively quickly after the end of the war, closely resembled models from the 1930s such as the Talbot Major and Talbot Baby and benefited from the reputation Talbots had built up in the prewar years, though the economic conditions made it unrealistic to produce the range of standard and special-bodied Talbots that had been a feature of the previous decade. The company's star engineer, Walter Becchia, transferred to Citroen at the start of the war, but Tony Lago was joined in 1942 by another exceptional engineering talent, Carlo Marchetti, and from then the two of them were working on the twin-camshaft 4483 cc six-cylinder unit that would lie at the heart of the Talbot T26.
  The French government that came to power in 1945 had a strong belief in political control of the economy. In addition to creating a taxation regime which savagely penalised cars with engine sizes above 2 litres, the government also introduced in January 1946 the so-called Pons Plan, under which different French automakers were told by government what car types they might build. Since government also controlled materials supplies – notably steel supplies – the Pons Plan could not be ignored. Talbot were not forbidden to build cars, but they, along with Hotchkiss and Delahaye-Delage were restricted to a class entitled by the bureaucrats "véhicules de classe exceptionnelle" – high-class vehicles. Plan implementation was at its most rigid in 1946, and in that year Talbot received government authorisation for the construction of an initial batch of 125 cars, provided the cars were exported.
  The Talbot Lago-Record Type T26 was first presented in public in 1946.
caption: Talbot Lago T26 Record cabriolet rear view
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