The Swiss Amilcar mystery: discovering the lost coachbuilders of Geneva and Zürich

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The first two pictures, from the archives of Zürich in Switzerland aren’t of a very good quality. That is a great pity because they show what seems to be a unique vehicle. The photographs are dated March 31st, 1929, and were made by the Stadtpolizei Zürich—the City Police. The reason for taking them was a traffic accident, which had taken place that day on the Zollstrasse and saw the rider of a motorcycle being hit and knocked off.

It’s not the motorbike, though, which we are interested in here; it’s the car parked further along the Zollstrasse, an unusually-bodied coupé, which must have been there by pure chance.

The extraordinary torpedo-style coupé looks to be a voiturette and, judging by the radiator, we think it's an Amilcar, but were there ever coupé variants made of those small French sports cars? There certainly were. French coachbuilder Duval made a few, but they are all very different from the one seen here. This one reminds us of a Bugatti Type 30 or 35 with a similar body we’ve seen a photograph of before—see the third picture. It's still surrounded by mystery though, as the Bugatti's coachbuilder seemed to be unknown to most people, but not everyone.

One person wrote on Coachbuild.com: “Car of Emil Bremme, Chassis #4878, Reg. IY 21166. Coachwork by Bachmann.” Not everyone agreed, although that’s of no further importance now. But Bachmann? Could that be the coachbuilder Bachmann-Bosshardt & Co., which even on the encyclopaedic Coachbuild.com received just one tiny little and ever so brief mention? Look closely—they were based in… Zürich!

That should have given us our answer, we thought; it didn’t, although the mysterious Bachmann-Bosshardt did send us on a trail through all the Swiss coachbuilders to see if there were any special-bodied Amilcars that stood out. Sure enough, that's where we found our car, filed away as an Amilcar CGS with body by Brichet of Geneva. What a great picture number four is, too. We don't think it's the same car, but maybe it's a Bachmann or Brichet body... Who knows?

Words: Jeroen Booij
Photographs: Stadtarchiv Zürich, Coachbuild.com, Buggati Builder

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