Gimson

History

Beginnings

Early in the 20th century, Pierre Gimbernat i Batlle, a renowned clockmaker from Perpignan, obtained the distribution license for French manufacturer Automoto for the Province of Girona. Gimbernat moved to Figueres, where he founded a small shop at 17th Sant Pau street. At first, he sold and repaired clocks and bicycles, also importing and selling bicycle spare parts. After some time, he decided to sell all this material and parts under his own brand, which he named Gimson.

Brand name

Gimson was an acronym for Gimbernat and Sons, a name that included Pierre Gimbernat and his three children: Pierre, Antoine and Françoise. A few years later they changed the business name to Gimbernat Hermanos, SRC. The company was always a family business. The main tasks were distributed to the three children of the founder: Pierre Gimbernat i Font, eldest brother, was the chief Engineer, Antoine was at the production department and Françoise was in the office, at the sales department.

As an anecdote, Pierre Gimbernat i Font attended drawing lessons with the distinguished professor Juan Núñez Fernández, where Salvador Dalí was a classmate. His parents thought that the fantasies of the future painter would be a bad influence on their son, thus they sent him to Mataro for a while, to live with a businessman who produced spokes for Gimson bicycles, to keep him away from distractions.

Business consolidation

With the outbreak of the First World War and, after, the Spanish Civil War, Gimbernat was able to survive both economic conditions because their suppliers were small workshops nearby. Thanks to the experience gained and good results with bicycles, in the mid-fifties they began manufacturing their first mopeds, starting by mounting the Gamo engine made in Barcelona by the renowned Parés brothers.

The company achieved a big commercial success and ended up having more than a hundred employees. Its main market was a part of Catalonia, North east Spain. The Gimbernats came up with a second brand for their bicycles named Esbelta, meaning slim, to have two distributors in the same place and a better control of the market. At one point, Gimson won a contest to provide bicycles to the Spanish Civil Guard, before the unit was equipped with Sanglas motorcycles. These bicycles were used to patrol the countryside, and were the standard model, fitted with a special support to place the rifle.

Third generation

Pere Gimbernat i Quintana, the founder's grandson and Engineer, had advanced ideas at that time. One was to produce the first electric moped in Catalonia. The prototype was presented in the 1973 Barcelona show, it had a Bosch engine. The prototype never went into production. Pere Gimbernat i Quintana was responsible for naming the new models, among which we find the successful Canigó, Polaris and Skipper. Moreover, he managed the whole process of the well-known commercial catalogs for their products (famous for its photographic and documentary quality). They were printed at local printing plants in Figueres, looking for the best spot to take the pictures, always landscapes from Empordà (the catalog pictures for the model Canigó were taken at Sant Llorenç de la Muga and the ones for the brand's main catalog were taken at Empuriabrava).

Closure

When Pierre Gimbernat i Font, the founder's son, died prematurely, the company was going through a tough time, with an oversized staff and the inability to apply a Layoff plan, adding the effects of the 1973 oil crisis and the entrance of the Japanese multinationals to the Spanish market. With the crisis, the company became a Cooperative and stopped producing mopeds, focusing only on bicycles. Pere Gimbernat i Quintana was at an age where he could not take too much risk, and he didn't have the funds to buy his Uncles part of the business, the situation became untenable, all ending in the closure of the factory in Figueres. The manufacturing right of the mopeds was acquired by the company placed in Murcia 'Motos del Sureste (Motomur)', which they marketed under the Beneti brand, although later it returned to the Gimson brand.

Beginning with the Gamo engine

From 1955, Gimson returned to the motorcycle business, starting by mounting Cucciolo and Villiers engines. Later, they produced their own model with a Gamo engine -manufactured in Barcelona between 1950 and 1955- consisting of 49 cc (moped) and 65 cc (velomotor), very advanced for that time, with a two-speed change, secondary transmission by single chain and rear brake on a singletube chassis in which protruded the bubble type Fuel Tank. The two versions of this model were named respectively 49 and 65.