page_title: Darracq and Company London
section_title: Owen Clegg
hierarchical_section_title: Darracq and Company London / History of the business / Owen Clegg
caption_attribution_description: Une Darracq type V14 16 HP torpédo de 1914. chassis 30119 engine 36912 2.9-litre 4-cylinder, C.A.V. electric lighting, folding windscreen, Auster rear screen. source of information
context_page_description: A Darracq and Company Limited owned a French manufacturer of motor vehicles and aero engines in Suresnes, near Paris. The French enterprise, known at first as A. Darracq et Cie, was founded in 1896 by Alexandre Darracq after he sold his Gladiator Bicycle business. In 1902, it took effect in 1903, he sold his new business to a privately held English company named A Darracq and Company Limited, taking a substantial shareholding and a directorship himself.
  Alexandre Darracq continued to run the business from Paris but was obliged to retire to the Côte d'Azur in 1913 following years of difficulties that brought Darracq & Co into very hazardous financial circumstances. He had introduced an unproven unorthodox engine in 1911 which proved a complete failure yet he neglected Suresnes' popular conventional products. France then entered the first World War.
  He died in 1931 but long before that, in 1920, the name of A Darracq & Co 1905 was changed to S T D Motors Limited. Then in 1922 Darracq's name was dropped from all products, the Suresnes business was renamed Automobiles Talbot and the Suresnes products were branded just Talbot.
context_section_description: In late 1911 Alexandre Darracq was replaced by new managing director, chief engineer Paul Ribeyrolles, one-time head of Darracq's Gladiator and, unlike Darracq, a motor racing enthusiast. In June 1912 Darracq, surrounded by "new blood", resigned, he had already successfully speculated on then sold all his shares. A main board director, Hopkins, was sent to Paris to take charge of general administration and Owen Clegg was sent to Suresnes from Rover in Coventry and appointed works manager. At the end of 1912 the chairman reassured shareholders a return on their investment in the valveless motor would arrive in 1913.
  By February 1913 shareholders had set up their own inquiry into the unsatisfactory position of their business and it reported poor co-operation between London and Suresnes, they had been pulling against each other, furthermore there had been considerable loss through "recent changes in personnel". The committee then went on record saying: 
  "M. Darracq, as a typical Frenchman, probably possessed far more originality and initiative than any Englishman of corresponding situation, but, if he displayed a failing, it was that he, like most of his brilliant race, lacked the Englishman's pertinacity, and, after a time, seemed to lose interest, as it were, in his original conceptions without making any serious effort to strike out a fresh line."
  The chairman of the investigating committee, Norman Craig, was appointed chairman of A Darracq and Company (1905).
  New works manager Owen Clegg, designer of the proven Rover Twelve, sensibly copied the Twelve for Darracq & Co's new model. The factory at Suresnes was retooled for mass production, making it one of the first in the industry to do so. The 16HP Clegg-Darracq was joined by an equally reliable 2.1-litre 12HP car, and soon the factory was turning out sixty cars a week; by 1914, 12,000 men rolled out fourteen cars a day.
caption: Clegg's 16 horsepower type V14
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