by Fons Alkemade: It is remarkable how many of the curious vehicles built by a rather obscure and only locally active company from the French town of Agen have survived to this day. Recently the pages of PreWarCar showed one of their cars offered for sale by someone in The Netherlands and almost at the same time another survivor appeared in an article on the exposition of cars from the Schlumpf 'reserve collection' in Kassel.
Why have so many La Nefs survived? For that is their name: La Nef (The Ship or The Nave), sometimes named after the men who founded the company: Lacroix (et) De Laville. Part of the explanation for this mystery may be found in an article by Malcolm Jeal in The Automobile: a French collector, who happened to have some loose De Dion engines, built at least three replicas in the 1960s.All La Nefs had a wooden frame, a single front wheel and tiller steering (in French: queue de vache = cow's tail). Transmission was by an impressive leather belt to the left rear wheel. Originally there was only one speed, some surviving examples have a Bozier multiplicateur. Joseph Lacroix had already been active as an inventor (colour photography, film projectors) before he became interested in self-propelling vehicles. In 1899 he built his first prototype, still rather crude and equipped with an engine of little power. In the years thereafter the La Nefs would be equipped with De Dion-Bouton engines of increasing power, up to 8 hp. The last La Nef seems to have left the atliers shortly before the Great War broke out. It has been estimated that at that time about 200 vehicles had been built and one gets the impression that apart from the engine there was not much development in the layout of the cars. Due its odd and primitive appearance it seems that some La Nefs have been dated incorrectly and are in fact somewhat younger than (former) owners have presumed.Joseph Lacroix had lost interest in cars by 1914 and went on inventing in other fields: a device to detect bullets in soldiers (1916), a method for blood analysis and electric clocks. He died in 1949 aged 88. (text and research Fons Alkemade, more photo to be found at LeZebre.eu)