Have you ever heard of the french supercar company: Vaillante? #blogpost

Vaillante is completely fictional but I’ve passed most of my childhood obsessed with Vaillante’s. The Vaillantes were featured in a French comic book series called “Michel Vaillant.” In this blog post, I will go trough the amazing history of the car manufacturer and some nice facts as well.

The origin

Vaillante was at first a transporting company. Founded by Henri Vaillant, the father of Michel Vaillant, they developed trucks, cars and decided at one point to enter in Motorsport with Michel as their driver.

Les Usines Vaillante

Then later on, Vaillante became a huge automobile manufacturer that specializes in trucks and supercars. They would then get into more and more Motorsports leagues.

Vaillante Team

Vaillante Team is the name of the Motorsport brand. created in 1939, Michel Vaillant first drove for the 24h of Lemans, Formula One, Nascar, Group B rally, WRC, GT racing and many more. His team mate includes Miss Margareth Ranson, an English female driver, Jean-Pierre Vaillant, the brother of Michel. Many more drivers joined the Vaillante Team for many different races which includes Stever Warson, Julie Wood but also non-fictional drivers such as Vanina Ickx, Didier Pironi and many more.

Non Fictional existence

Vaillante may be fictional but the badge did appear many times in real life.

-Vaillante has a large following in France and Belgium, and there are many toy models of Vaillante cars available for fans, based on the series.

-In 1997, a Courage C41 was painted in a Vaillante color scheme and entered in the Le Mans 24 Hours, in which it finished 4th.

-In 2002, a Lola B98/10 LMP sportscar in Vaillante livery was entered at the Le Mans 24 Hours to obtain footage for the Luc Besson film Michel Vaillant.

-There have been also a few attempts to create real Vaillante cars, both road cars and racing cars. A driving school project was launched and the FR2000 Vaillante team was created by Graton Editeur and SportsManShip.

-In 2006, a prototype blue SEAT Ibiza Vaillante designed by Luc Donckerwolke is presented in Geneva.

-A Vaillante themed Chevrolet Cruze 1.6T driven by Alain Menu appeared on round 7 of the 2012’ FIA World Touring Car Championship held at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve between 1–3 June 2012.

yep, there is a LOT of Vaillante cars. In my opinion, I find them GORGEOUS and unique. I always find them very good looking when I was younger, its sad really that there isn’t more story for this amazing car company :) tell me what you think of them, have you ever heard of it before?