Louis Lucien Lepoix, designer

Louis Lucien Lepoix (Also known as L3)
(Giromagny, 4 February 1918 – Baden-Baden, 6 November 1998)

French engineer and form designer Louis Lucien Lepoix was one of the most prolific industrial designers in the second half of the 20th century. His design studio FORM TECHNIC International (fti design) served clients in Europe and overseas. Fti design branches were opened in Paris in 1956 and in Barcelona in 1965. Louis L. Lepoix's more than 50 years of activity included about 3000 realized products such as the BIC lighter, the Kienzle parking meter, the forearm crutch, the side table, Bugatti Type 101, Steyr tractors, buses and trucks as well as another 250 vehicles and more than 3000 products. With enthusiasm Louis L. Lepoix developed environmentally friendly small vehicles and already from 1941 he paid special attention to the use of wind energy.

The Bugatti project
In 1948 Lepoix bought an old Simca-rolling chassis, on which he built a roadster to his own design, helped by his employee Franz Villing.

With this car he visited the Bugatti company in Molsheim, to show various designs he had made for a modern Bugatti. Director Pierre Marco liked his designs, and gave him the order to design the body of the new Bugatti Type 101.

The Lepoix designed body was coachbuilt by Spohn on a 1950 Bugatti Type 100 (later to be called T101), a slightly modified Type 57 chassis. The car has been preserved, and is now in the Musée National de l'Automobile, Collection Schlumpf, in Mulhouse, France.

When he had difficulty finding work in France after the war, he was invited by the Zahnradfabrik Friedrichshafen. He was given a studio in the still intact basement of the bombed former Zeppelin factory. In 1947, he fitted his private BMW R 12 with a very futuristic bodywork that hid the entire motorcycle from view, including the exhaust system. (Photo on the right)

The rider's legs were protected from the elements, but the machine had no windshield.
He was then commissioned by Bugatti to design the first post-war cars.

In 1948, he designed a car with a transparent roof and tail fins, which also had a jet engine. For Steyr-Puch, he made a modern car design based on a Fiat 500. In his studio FTI (Société Form Technic International), which had been founded in 1947, he already had 7 employees.

In addition to his work as an industrial designer, he now also made drawings, paintings and sculptures.

In the years up to his move, he was mainly involved in designs for scooters and motorcycles. For Horex, he made a prototype of a Horex Regina with elegant sheet metal. His scooter designs can be called "clumsy" by today's standards, but in the late forties and early fifties they were actually supposed to be cheap alternatives to a car, and therefore had a lot of sheet metal.

This is clearly visible in the Bastert Einspurauto, the Horex 250 cc scooter and especially the Maicomobil, all heavy scooters and actually cars on two wheels.

The Maicomobil was nicknamed "Trockenhaube" (hair dryer) in its own country and in England it became "Flying Dustbin". In addition to the spacious streamlined fairing, the machine had a tunnel-shaped rear that had exactly the diameter of the spare wheel, which was therefore mounted on the back. The wide fixed front mudguards of Lepoix were imitated by almost all German scooter manufacturers. The Italians, on the other hand, built slim, light scooters with rotating front mudguards. The Walba scooters were also by Lepoix. Here too, the front was a fixed part of the bodywork. The Walba Commodore was a frivolous design with a headlight integrated into the handlebars.

In 1952, Louis Lepoix moved with his studio to Baden-Baden. He had a difficult time financially, which is why he entered into a contract with the French army in Germany and only ran his studio in the evenings. He was able to pay off his debts thanks to an assignment from Ford. Nevertheless, in 1954 he moved to a building without water, light and even without windows. Fortunately, the assignments started pouring in after that; in the fifties, approximately 70% of all German products were by Lepoix. He did not limit himself to cars or motorcycles, but also designed urinals, washing machines, radios, televisions, tools and agricultural machinery. In 1965, Lepoix opened an office in Barcelona. When he also received recognition in his home country, he opened a studio in Neuilly. In 1968, he built an office there that he designed himself.

Lepoix also designed scooters for Puch, Strolch and TWN. He also designed the Kreidler mopeds and Kienzle parking meters. He also designed trucks for Magirus-Deutz, Büssing, Hanomag, Henschel, Steyr, Saurer, Pegaso, Star, Saviem, Berliet, Kaelble and DAF.

Although Louis Lepoix was very versatile and active in 38 areas of design technology, he did not become rich from his designs. He was not a businessman and although he tried to patent his designs, manufacturers managed to get around this by changing a few strokes of the pen. Because Lepoix received a commission based on the number of units sold, he did not receive a cent. He also had to travel a lot between his studios and then discovered that they had hardly been productive during his absence, which meant that a lot of money was lost.

His marriage to a woman he hardly knew did not go well, but it was expensive. Because his wife did not want to divorce, he could never marry his future lover Erika Kübler. She did become a good secretary and completed his book "50 Years of Technical Engineering" after his death.

For more info on Louis Lucien Lepoix, please go to: www.lepoix.info or thevintagent.com/2017/09/19/louis-lucien-lepoix/