Jean-Albert Grégoire

Tracta joints were used by many of the pioneers of front-wheel drive, including DKW between 1929 and 1936 and Adler from 1932 to 1939 as well as the cars designed by J A Grégoire that will be mentioned later.

The Tracta joint was fitted to most of the military vehicles that had driven front wheels used by most of the combatants in the Second World War.

They included Laffly and Panhard in France, Alvis and Daimler in the UK and Willys in the United States that used the joint in a quarter of a million Jeeps and many others.

But the car had its bad points, cable brakes and gear-change linkage and a side-valve engine although the latter was still common at this time.

It had a chassis-body frame of light alloy, front-wheel drive, an air-cooled flat twin engine and independent suspension on all wheels.

With independent suspension on all four wheels and fitted with a water-cooled flat four engine of 2 litres, ahead of the front axle, it was fast, with a top speed of 94 mph (151 km/h), but the car was expensive and only 250 examples were made by 1954.