Émile Delahaye

Émile Delahaye (October 16, 1843 – June 1, 1905) was a French automotive pioneer who founded Delahaye Automobiles.

Émile Delahaye was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire. He studied engineering at Arts et Métiers ParisTech trade school in Angers, the same school later attended by Louis Delâge, another automobile pioneer. For a time, Delahaye worked in Belgium at the Crail Engineering works, a company known for making steam engines for locomotives. He returned to Tours following the French defeat in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871. Delahaye married in 1873. In 1879, he took over the Brethon Foundry and Machine-works, a business specializing in manufacturing brick kilns and related equipment for the ceramics trade. Delahaye experimented with steam and internal combustion engines, eventually converting part of the company's production to manufacturing stationary petrol engines. In 1894, he displayed his first automobile at the first-ever Paris Motor Show. It was one of only two motorized entries.

To publicize his product, Delahaye raced one of his cars in the 1896 Paris–Marseille–Paris road race. Faced with health problems, Delahaye partnered with two industrialists from Paris, brothers-in-law Leon Desmarais and Georges Morane. By 1898, the new ownership relocated automobile production from Tours to the industrial building in the Gobelin district of Paris that Desmarais and Morane had inherited. In 1901, Delahaye's poor health forced him to step down as President. He sold his shares to his partners, and retired to the French Riviera where he died in 1905.

The company he founded survived until it closed on December 31, 1954.

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