Aluminium production had been vastly expanded in most industrialized countries during the late 1930s for wartime aviation. The resulting post-World War II glut was a stimulus to design in many countries. One Italian designer called it the ‘Mussolini metal’ and the widespread availability of the material influenced products in Italy from Gaggia coffee machines to Olivetti typewriters.
In France the search for new outlets led the giant Aluminium Français concern to team up with serial automotive inventor Jean-Albert Grégoire (1898–1992) of Tracta to design an allaluminium car for the postwar world. Eventually produced as the light and clever front-drive Dyna, the car was a new step for the ancient and august luxury Panhard make, but it was genuinely useful and had excellent economy, thanks to an aerodynamic shape and an efficient, simple two-cylinder motor.
The Dyna was an interesting design experiment at a time when no one was quite sure what a car should look like any more. Its use of aluminium, however, proved a dead end – though touted as the metal of the future, since then its use in bodies for popular cars has remained limited. Poor Grégoire, too, evidently found his path as an independent designer a struggle, commenting, ‘The hard law of life … does not tolerate people receiving reward for their perseverance and labours without dealing out bitter disappointments in return.’
The aluminium egg. The Dyna Panhard was an excellent and innovative entrant to the popular car market, though, like so many unusual alternatives, it was eventually extinguished by the forces of amalgamation, homogenization and globalization. In 1965 Panhard was absorbed by Citroën.