13 Facts About Berliet

Berliet was a French manufacturer of automobiles, buses, trucks and military vehicles among other vehicles based in Venissieux, outside of Lyon, France.

Berliet started to build four-cylinder automobiles featured by a honeycomb radiator and steel chassis frame was used instead of wood.

In 1906, Berliet sold the licence for manufacturing his model to the American Locomotive Company.

Berliet CBA became the iconic truck on the Voie Sacree, supplying the battle front at Verdun during 1916.

Under license from Renault, Berliet were producing shells and battle tanks at this time.

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Marius Berliet responded to the outbreak of peace by deciding to produce just a single type of truck and a single type of car, which represented a departure from his pre-war market strategy.

The single truck on which Berliet focused was the 5 ton CBA that had served the nation so well during the war.

Passenger car to be produced, exhibited on the Berliet stand at the 15th Paris Motor Show in October 1919, was the 3296cc "Torpedo" bodied "Berliet Type VB" of modern appearance.

Marius Berliet was not one to miss a trick: rather than devote time and engineering talent to developing a new car for the new decade, he obtained and copied an American Dodge.

The Dodge was famously robust, and the Berliet copy was well received in March 1919 when it had its first public outing, locally, at the Lyon Trade Fair.

Unfortunately the Berliet engineers failed to ensure that the steel used in the car's construction was of the same quality as the North American steel used for the Dodge, and this resulted in serious problems for the early customers of the "Berliet Type VB" and serious reputational damage to the company.

In 1930 Berliet experimentally installed a diesel engine in one of their old CBA trucks, and in 1931 a batch of diesel powered Berliet GD2s was produced.

Berliet was given back to the family in 1949, but to Marius Berliet's son Paul as following the founder's death earlier that year.