This particular car, the Belna Eclipse, was one of the most stylish of the breed. And the first in the world to have a retractable metal or 'hard' top to function as both closed and open bodied.
In the late 1920s, Georges Paulin, a dental technician living in Paris, invented a retractable hardtop. He patented the design and sold it to a French coachbuilder, Marcel Pourtout. This firm built several cars on the chassis of a French-built Lancia - a Belna, very similar to the Italian-built Lancia Augusta.
This model, the Belna Eclipse, has that hand-operated hard top, counter balanced by bungee cords, that disappears into the trunk. And it actually works!
The car is powered by a little 70 cubic inch V4 mated to a 4 speed manual gearbox producing 35 horsepower and a top speed of about 65 mph. Not a fast car, Lancia had bigger more powerful cars in their stable but for sheer style this was a car hard to beat! And how often do you see yellow upholstery?
