The story
In 1922, Louis Heuliez took control of his father, Adolphe Heuliez's, workshop in Cerizay, which, at the time, was in the business of making "English-style" carts. In 1923, Louis created a process for rubberizing wheels, and in 1925, he assembled his first car, a Peugeot 177B. Starting in 1936, Heuliez began production of vehicles with metal bodies under the Robustacier brand. Louis Heuliez passed away in 1947, leaving his son Henri to run the company, while Henri's twin brother, Pierre, ran the design workshop.
From 1948 to 1952, Heuliez saw growth from their manufacture of touring coaches (buses) and large promotional vehicles for advertising. In 1952, the Société Louis Heuliez was founded and the company began to work with Citroën on low volume vehicle production. At the same time, a new division was created for school furniture. 1965 saw the creation of their first factory outside Cerizay, the Henri Heuliez Bressuire Company, manufacturing door frames for the Peugeot 404. In 1968, they began to work with Simca on large scale bodywork production.
In 1969, SA Louis Heuliez was restructured into four divisions, which were renamed in 1972 to the Automotive Studies Division (DEA) (Studies-Prototypes-Testing), the Heuliez Automobiles Division (Stamping and Body Assembly), the Car and Bus Division, and the Series Vehicles Division (Ambulances-Livestock Trucks-Flatbeds). The subsidiary company for the production of buses was later sold in 1980 and trades as Heuliez Bus. In 1972, their bus division began working with Mercedes-Benz. In 1974, Gérard Quéveau succeeded Henri Heuliez as president of the company.
Towards the end, the main product of Heuliez was the retractable roof made for the Peugeot 206 CC, with 350,000 units being produced. It also produced entire cars, such as the Opel Tigra. Since 1985, Heuliez has produced more than 450,000 cars, with a staff of over 2,000.
Poor sales of the Tigra forced Heuliez to reduce its staff by 541 and Opel asked Heuliez to reduce its output from 200 to 50 cars/day until the end of 2006.
In October 2007, Heuliez asked for protection from creditors. In July 2008, Argentum Motors committed itself to invest 10 million Euros in the business, with a further 10 million Euros during the ensuing five years, in return for 60% of the company's capital, but the agreement was not followed through.
The main production plant is located in Cerizay in the Deux-Sèvres département. The president of Heuliez is Paul Quéveau.
In 2010, Heuliez went out of the convertible rooftop-making business, and the electric vehicle elements were acquired by the Franco-German group Baelen Gaillard Industrie-ConEnergy-Kohl and were renamed Mia electric, which itself ceased business in 2014.
From Wikipedia’s article on Heuliez, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3