Cayatte-Bresson
 | |
| Société anonyme | |
| Traded as | BdD: CB BKB: CB |
| Industry | Automotive |
| Founded | 8 January 1912 |
| Founder | André Cayatte-Bresson |
| Headquarters | , |
Number of locations | 77 dealerships |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people | Éric Cayatte-Bresson, CEO |
Production output | 2,984 vehicles (2015) |
| Revenue |  ₳324 million (2017) |
| ₳11 million (2017) | |
| Total equity | ₳2.2 billion (2017) |
Number of employees | 1,124 (2016) |
Cayatte-Bresson Auto Mécaniques S.A. is an Vaillais transport company specializing in high-performance luxury sports cars and luxury automotive interior design. The company is known for its luxurious, distinctive and well-received vehicle designs and, in recent years, for their performance; the world's fastest production cars have been Cayatte-Bressons since 1989. The company's headquarters, production facilities and test track are located just outside Barré-Karrigan. André Cayatte-Bresson, a Vaillais naval engineer with extensive experience as an automotive hobbyist, founded the company in 1915 as a custom car manufacturer. The arrival of industrialist Jacques Barneau saw the company transform from a small family luxury automotive shop to a full-blown luxury car marque with the launch of the Cayatte-Bresson Rapide.
Cayatte-Bresson rose to international prominence after its cars won the Erisian Grand Prix in 1923, 1924, 1930, and 1939, and quickly became a symbol of Vaillais culture. Following André's death in 1951, his son Gaspard took control of the company. Under Gaspard, Cayatte-Bresson greatly expanded its research and development, and briefly produced airplanes.
Cayatte-Bresson currently produces the Frégate, the Colibri, and the Étendard.
History
Early history
The company was founded by André Cayatte-Bresson, a TKTK-trained naval architect who had assisted in the design of many of Vailleux's pre-Dreadnought battleships, before retiring from the Vaillais Navy in 1895 and joining the Porte-Calme Lines company as a designer. Born to a wealthy family, he first encountered auto racing in 1906 when the course of the inaugural Barré-Karrigan Grand Prix ran by his family estate outside Barré-Karrigan; according to his autobiography, he was instantly smitten. Upon his retirement from the Porte-Calme Lines in 1908, he began building cars in a workshop on his family's estate and entering them in races in the area, many of which Cayatte-Bresson organized himself (and won).
In 1910, Cayatte-Bresson purchased a small factory in Barré-Karrigan and there founded the company that bears his name to produce his cars. The first model produced was the Cayatte-Bresson Modele 1911, an improved version of which came in second at the 1912 Barré-Karrigan Grand Prix. After a brief pause in operations due to the First Great War, during which Cayatte-Bresson returned to the navy and helped design the Porte-Calme-class battleship, the company returned with the Modeles 1922 and 1925, which achieved immense success in races around southern Vailleux.
By 1927, the Barré-Karrigan Grand Prix—the only internationally-recognized race in which Cayatte-Bresson vehicles had taken place—had achieved a great amount of international notoriety. During that year's edition of the race, Cayatte-Bresson had a chance encounter with industrialist Jacques Barneau, president of the Vaillais Océanique Lines, rival of the Porte-Calme Lines. Barneau became interested in Cayatte-Bresson's highly successful race cars, and invested large sums into the company. The influx of cash allowed the company to both expand its operations and send its vehicles to races further afield, such as the newly-established Porte-Calme Grand Prix and the TKTK Grand Prix, both of which the new Modele 1928 won handily, taking at least the top three positions in both races. The company also increased production threefold, selling nearly 1,100 vehicles across all models by 1933, up from just 350 before Barneau's arrival. The Modele 1932 underperformed by Cayatte-Bresson standards, only winning one race which was not on the international circuit, but the Modele 1936 found typical success with victories at TKTK, TKTK, and TKTK.
Downturn
André Cayatte-Bresson passed away in 1940 shortly after the debut of the Modele 1939. Although the Md.1939 was highly successful, production soon paused again in mid-1941 due to the outbreak of the Second Great War. During the conflict, the Vaillais were soundly defeated, with invading Vierz troops using the expansive factory as a command post for several months in 1943. Although the buildings were left standing, the factory's equipment had been taken to aid the Vierz war effort. Many of the technical drawings were taken either as reparations or as souvenirs, and most of the others were destroyed in the fighting.
The Cayatte-Bresson company continued to exist, led by André's son Gaspard and financed by the considerable fortunes left in both his father's will and that of Jacques Barneau, who had passed away during the war. However, the loss of both André and the company's technical drawings severely diminished the company's engineering capabilities. Between 1946 and 1960, the company produced just two cars, the Modeles 1949 and 1957, neither of which saw racing or commercial success. Between falling sales and the general economic malaise spurred by the Vaillais Civil War, the company continued to contract; by 1965, most of the company's engineering staff had been laid off and its factories mainly produced construction equipment under contract.
Modele 1972 and resurgence
In 1972, Cayatte-Bresson debuted the Modele 1972, its first new vehicle in more than a decade. Designed by Gaspard's nephew Éric, it was the first to be designed primarily as a luxury grand tourer, rather than as a race car. In order to drum up marketing buzz, Éric gifted a Md.1972 to then-President and car enthusiast TKTK, who greatly enjoyed the car and was publicly seen in it on numerous occasions in Porte-Calme. In part because of this publicity, the Md.1972 far outsold projections, with more than 7,600 being produced, more than every other Cayatte-Bresson model combined up to that point. The unexpected success of the Modele 1972 revitalized the company's fortunes, allowing it to comfortably establish re-establish production lines and re-hire staff. Among them was TKTK, who had previously worked for Cayatte-Bresson between 1933 and 1941 under André and had recently retired as the racing chief for TKTK Motors, where his vehicles won TKTK.
The Modele 1972 was followed up by the Modele 1979 and the Modele 1980 (which debuted alongside the Md.1979 in that year, with the model numbering incremented by one for simplicity's sake). The Modele 1979 superceded the Md.1972 as an enthusiast car with similar reception, while the Modele 1980 marked the company's return to high-performance racing, though in rallye rather than Grand Prix competitions.