In the Michel Vaillant comic strip, the cars of the eponymous brand have been numerous since 1957. They form a large family, the latest offspring of which, the Vaillante Montlhéry, is the fruit of a long-standing friendship with Thierry Metroz, DS design boss. Here is his story.
Named Pikes Peak, in reference to the famous American hill climb, the last album of the adventures of Michel Vaillant starts off with a bang… on a simulator. In the era of time, the famous pilot trains on screen for this demanding 20 km long event which ends at an altitude of 4,400 meters.
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Birth of Vaillante Montlhéry
His wife, Françoise Vaillant, whose features evoke Sophie Marceau, now holds the reins of the Vaillante company. She very much hopes for a victory for her pilot husband, to successfully launch the very latest model of her automobile brand: the Vaillante Montlhéry.
The album – the 80th opus of the series – leaves plenty of room, at first, for the racing car which is legitimately called Vaillante X-Pikes. Environmentally friendly, it is powered by two electric motors powered by hydrogen according to the principle of Fuel cell. This single-seater shares its engine with the future production model which is of particular interest to us. This fictional vehicle is therefore called Montlhéry from the name of the autodrome located in Essonne, south of Paris.
In real life, Jean-Louis Dauger – director of development for the company Michel Vaillant – has tied for nearly 20 years a friendship with Thierry Metroz, the design director of the automobile brand DS. The two friends were working at Renault at the time, notably on an astonishing Avantime project.
Featured on a future album
So when creating a vehicle that is realistic enough to integrate the adventures of Michel Vaillant, Jean-Louis Dauger naturally turned to Thierry Metroz, a fan of Michel Vaillant from a young age. The designer told one of his stylists, Ugo Spagnolo, known for having designed the DS7 Crossback SUV as well as the DS Number 9 concept car in 2012, the design of the Vaillante Montlhéry.
This compact model with angular lines at will benefit from a very neat aerodynamics. The shark-nose pointed muzzle is not lacking in aggressiveness and the silhouette of the car firmly planted on a long wheelbase ideal for an electric propulsion model brings dynamism. This 5-door sedan sports a white-lacquered floating roof that visually lightens the whole, like the very hollowed-out sills. At the rear, an imposing diffuser guarantees a significant ground effect. Following his sketches, Ugo Spagnolo modeled the Vaillante Montlhéry in three dimensions so that comic strip designers could integrate it as easily and especially in the most realistic way in the boxes of the adventures of Michel Vaillant. And if we see very little, the Vaillante Montlhéry in this album n ° 80, it will be greatly enhanced in the next volume expected in June 2022 since, in history, it will arrive in concession.
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