Henry Bauchet
French automotive engineer (1879-1970)
Henry Bauchet was a French ingénier (1879–1970) and inventor. He was born on 22 April 1879 in Frevent, Pas-de-Calais and died on 19 December 1970 in Lyon. He designed and manufactured the first prototype of modern automobile, called "La Sirène" from 1899 to 1907.
He graduated from School of Arts and Crafts in Châlons-en-Champagne and was one of the first holders of a driving licence in France.
After a life dedicated to the automobile, in 1963, in Valencia, he was knocked down by a car, which left him with a slight limp. A street in Rethel is named after him.
The Bauchet car
In 1899, in Rethel in the Ardennes, a vehicle called La Sirène designed by engineers Henry Bauchet and his collaborator Charles Schmidt took to the road. Until then, automobiles looked more like carriages with large wooden wheels with a motor under the seats. La Sirène was an innovative car with a look close to the ones we know today, with a hooded engine at the front, a steering wheel, a body and four metal wheels equipped with all-new tires invented in 1891 by the Michelin brothers. It had a 5/8 cv twin-cylinder engine, 4-speed transmission and shaft drive.
“Henry Bauchet” enters the record as french automotive engineer (1879-1970). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Henry, Bauchet and French can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5717880. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1879, 1970, 1899 and 1907.
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This entry incorporates text from “Henry Bauchet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.