Louis Heuliez

Louis Heuliez, who died in 1947, was a wheelwright and industrialist of Cerizay in the Deux-Sèvres department of France, who built a family carriage and cart workshop into a coachbuilding firm that still carries his name. According to the history of the firm published by L'Automobile Ancienne, the company Heuliez was founded at Cerizay in 1920 by Louis Heuliez, and in 1922, when he was 35, he took over the family business, whose wheelwright craft had been handed down from one generation of the family to the next. He specialised the workshop in light horse-drawn carrioles, then developed and patented in 1923 a process for rubber-coating wheels. In 1925 the firm presented its first automobile body, built on a Peugeot 177 B chassis, which marked its turn from carts to motor vehicles. He also registered the Robustacier trademark for a method of building bodies on a metal frame. Louis Heuliez died on 14 April 1947, and his son Henri took over the succession of the firm.