The Carat Duchatelet from Liege, Belgium is a special tuning company that isn’t “Made in Germany” as people obssesed with, but is more favored by Mercedes-Benz than those “Made in Germany” craftsmanship. Cars tuned by Duchatelet have long been covered by the Mercedes-Benz warranty. In 1994, Duchatelet joined the 140 Pullman program and later became the OE manufacturer of Pullman.
In the earlier article History: 140s from TRASCO BREMEN we profiled one of the most important German tuning companies of the 1990s, Trasco Bremen. Trasco was known for stretching and armouring the S-Class, and they once claimed they had better protection than factory Mercedes. They have valued customers all over the world. However, Trasco never collaborated with Mercedes-Benz and therefore fell behind on some important projects. Duchatelet is considered the more advanced brand in this segment. Therefore, we interviewed the head of Duchatelet’s R&D department, Olivier Rahier to find out how Duchatelet did this.
Olivier Rahier
R&D Manager of Carat by Duchatelet from 1990 to 1994. Responsible for the development and building of Armoured and special vehicles purposely built for Royal and Presidential use and based on the Mercedes S Class (W 140).
Tell us the story about yourself, and how did you start career with Duchatelet?
Olivier: I started at Duchatelet in April 1990 after I was recruited by Frederic Duchatelet to organize his R&D department to prepare for the introduction of the 140 and redefine all the products accordingly: interior design, accessories, stretching jigs, armoring, braking system…My previous job was at Lotus Engineering in England where I was principal engineer for the design of chassis in the Advanced Vehicle group.
When he turned to Lotus engineer, what is the mission that Frederic Duchatelet given to you?
Olivier: The core work of Carat Duchatelet was the transformation of existing vehicle to the customer specifications. Originally, the transformation was only a customization interior design changes, wheels, bumpers, leather interior, steering wheel in wood,…. The idea of Mr Duchatelet was to provide the warmth of British cars to Mercedes that he considered as the best car on a mechanical point of view but with too rigid/cold. He wanted all his work to be “classy”, not like competitors who often went for outrageous design changes (Brabus,..).
More industrial. Compared to previous products, has Duchatelet made a leap forward on the 140?
Olivier: Before the introduction of the 140, every vehicle was unique and made with very little drawings. The vehicles arrived from the factory, were stripped down and all the components were sent to the various departments to be modified. The total production before the 140 was probably 100 vehicles per year with around 20 limousines per year. The stretching of the 126 was “à la carte” ranging from as little as 30cm to 100cm. Every car body panel needed for the stretching was hand made which was very time consuming.
For the 140, Mr Duchatelet had the ambition to make it more industrial and he invested a lot in this model. Introducing the CAD system was my first job when I joined Duchatelet in 1990. 3D CAD design was novel at the time (was only introduced at cars manufactured in the late 80s – 1988 at Lotus). Starting in 1992, Mr Duchatelet insisted that all the accessories were meeting Mercedes specifications and therefore used the same suppliers (wheels) or same materials.
When was the development started? What is your first production model?
Olivier: This design was started first with measurements made at the Geneva motor show on the first vehicle available: we spent hours in the vehicle to take all the measurements necessary to start developing our prototypes and our concepts. It was a difficult experience with a notebook and a measuring tape…Then clay model of the bumper was molded. From this mold, we produced a fiber glass model which was then used as a model for the final mold used to produce the polyurethane bumper. The new wheel was also designed with the W 140 in mind: more curved design compared to previous – more angular. We looked for a solution to provide a good deceleration for a car that had a weight increase from 2200kg to 4000kg. Some of the cars built earlier had racing brakes with 3 piston calipers.
The first product is a conversion with partition for a standard W 140 that we developed between April 1991 and September 1991. This model was presented at the IAA in September 1991. We sold many of these conversions with partition for standard limousines and also for armoured vehicles.
About the limousine, streched S-class wasn’t Duchatelet’s main business in the 80s. What made that change?
Olivier: Because there was no offer for stretched armored limousines, a lot of the companies working on Mercedes Tuning switched to this business like Trasco, Brabus, AMG and some British companies too. All these cars were hand made and with different levels of professionalism. While waiting for the 140, we designed a Rolls Royce stretched limousine which was produced at 10 examples and mostly sold in Japan. We also explored entering the airplane world with the transformation of a Gulfstream airplane at the time but the market was not there. When the 140 arrived, all the efforts were refocused on cars.
The +60 cm limousine is probably the most ideal stretched 140, reminds us the great W 100.
Olivier: The specific rear door and extended C pillar is unique to Duchatelet. For the 140, Mr Duchatelet wanted the car to be discrete, not like the previous limousines. This is why he designed the door this way. The selection was made to have a standard 60cm extension with a special partition with strapontin seats – the one below.
For the 140, Duchatelet became more elegant, was there also a jump of design?
Olivier: You noticed already that the design became more exclusive and discrete rather than outrageous. It was MrDuchatelet’s choice to have discrete accessories that respect Mercedes design and did not transform into a tuned vehicle. The designer of the interior was Stephen Ferrada who worked at Mercedes until 1990 before becoming freelance. He was contracted by Frederic Duchatelet. For other ranges (W 124 and W 126), Mr Duchatelet was either designing himself by making mock ups on cars or had the help of young designers he recruited and trained.
I know for a fact by talking to designers at Mercedes that the work of Duchatelet inspired them to add leather, wood, design to the next generations of vehicles. For me the W 140 interior was the example of Carat Duchatelet inspiration to Mercedes.
The bottom of 140 side window isn’t straight. Did the original design gave you trouble to stretch?
It was a compromise between doing nothing (easier but not harmonious) and going to the fll job of making complete new toolings. I remember intense discussions with MrDuchatelet on this topic…One key characteristic of Duchatelet stretched cars is to keep the original curvature of the vehicle unlike competitors who just filled the gaps and introduced a break in the roof line: curve – stretched straight line – curve. Finding a matching curve for the extension made it more difficult but the result was much more harmonious.
Why Duchatelet was chosen to cooprate for the North Korean Pullman build?
Olivier: Daimler was not ready to produce these vehicles because there was not sufficient numbers to make a dedicated production line but often sent their customers to Duchatelet for stretched and armored vehicles because they believed in our professionalism. In 1994, we were invited by the direction of Mercedes to enter into a cooperation with Mercedes to produce armored limousines… Mr Duchatelet’s dream coming through normally as he finally got recognized. We started the development of the limousine early 1994 with Mercedes R&D and were asked to supply the extended roof and the specific interior.
Why didn’t Mercedes choose the +60 cm limousine? And you also launched new limousine similar to the Pullman at IAA 1995.
Olivier: +60 cm was the standard and much more harmonious but some customers insisted on +100 cm for space reason. The 100 cm straight line did not worry so much Daimler as they did not want to retool the doors just for the look– to our surprise… Mercedes used a more simple method to make the limousine as they did not have to make the car and stretch it afterwards: they made it as a limousine from new. With access to the tooling, it was easy for them to ask for the parts to be 100 cm long… Also their choice to keep the rear door and add a 100 cm panel in the middle made also their life a lot easier…
How deep is the cooperation between Duchatelet and Daimler?
Olivier: At that time, Mercedes was already working with AMG officially and our hope was that the brand Duchatelet would be associated with Mercedes for the Limousine side. Mercedes did not see it that way and asked AMG instead to deal with Duchatelet which Frederic Duchatelet did not like because Duchatelet and AMG had been historically strong competitors.
Initially we bought racing brakes for limousines but it was high maintenance and not very progressive. Looking for a better solution, we tried to increase the brake assistance with a double vacuum brake booster and finally purchased the very efficient hydraulic brake booster directly from Daimler. To make sure we met the safety requirements, we did purchase the wheels and the braking system from Mercedes as spare parts for armored vehicles starting in 1993.
Why Mercedes and Duchatelet didn’t share the same windshield while they both manufactured by ISOCLIMA?
Olivier: Carat Duchatelet and Mercedes used the same supplier ISOCLIMA. The glasses were different because we developped it to fit our own design of window sliding and also to match our armoring solution. The armouring W 140 was developed in 1992 at Duchatelet – before Mercedes released its own armored version that was kept secret. So it was a parallel design that we made and surprisingly, we came to very similar solutions, as we discovered when we visited the special line of armoring at Mercedes.
What’s difference between factory sonderschutz and armored Duchatelet?
Olivier: An armored W 140 at Duchatelet is a standard W 140 that is armored afterwards, meant taking a new car, stripping it and making the necessary body modifications to place the armoring. An armored W 140 from Daimler is a vehicle built specially on a dedicated line. For exaxmple, Duchatelet did not armour the hood but instead we armoured the front bulkhead. The principle of Duchatelet armoring was to create a complete structural shell by connecting the armoring plate together. I insisted on this because the final vehicle could reach 4000kg.
Very interesting. Do you remember any memorable client?
Olivier: An interesting story about Mr Lee from Samsung Group: he was one of the best customers of Duchatelet and sent his personal to work with us on the electronic so every single car had the same centralized remote control so he could control the music and the television from the same keyboard. Mr Lee was a customer always asking for a very high level of customization. His staff had strict instructions and despite our trials to lead him towards standard products, we always ended up with unique products…
photo: Samsung Transportation Museum
This 60 cm stretch was the 2nd W 140 for Mr Lee. The first one was stretched by 30cm and he used it to go to the opening ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics but afterwards thought that 30 cm was too short and insisted that we added another 30 cm… Instead, we sold the 30 cm vehicle and built a new 60cm for him…
All history are based on limited information, please email me if you have doubts about the veracity of this article. If you want to quote the content of this article, please contact me in advance, please do not use my text for any commercial purposes.