The radiator of a 1911 Turicum. The brand took its name from Turicum, the Latin name for Zurich, where the first models were built before production was moved to Uster.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Martini, Pic-Pic, Turicum or Stella. For most Swiss, these names no longer mean much. On the eve of the First World War, however, the country was home to several dozen car manufacturers and an industry that employed more people than the watchmaking sector. How did this industrial adventure fade from memory?
At the Pierre Gianadda Foundation in Martigny, Claude Margueret spends his days surrounded by the world’s largest collection of Swiss cars. Among the 42 vehicles on display are 15 Swiss models.
Margueret is not content merely to recount their history. He also occasionally gets behind the wheel. Over the years he has even driven some of the cars in the collection to transport distinguished guests between Martigny railway station and the foundation.
Like the Swiss navy
In the exhibition guide, one sentence perfectly sums up the paradox: “Few people can name more than two or three Swiss makes of car. The subject sometimes raises a smile, a bit like the story of the Swiss navy.”
Nevertheless, the text continues, “right up until the eve of the First World War, Switzerland was a car-manufacturing nation with several dozen manufacturers, the most important of which made their mark at the motor shows in London and Paris.”
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1914: how war changed Swiss life
According to statistics from the period cited by the Foundation, the automotive industry and its suppliers generated some CHF15 million in exports at the start of the 20th century. Even more surprising is that the sector employed over 40,000 people – more than the watchmaking industry. On the eve of the First World War, Switzerland had more than 25 car factories.
However, these figures must be put into context. The motor car was still in its infancy. Behind some brands lay genuine industrial enterprises, while others produced just a single model, sometimes on the initiative of a local craftsman or blacksmith.
Like most cars of the early 20th century, this 1908 Zedel ZL, manufactured in Saint-Aubin, near Neuchâtel, features an open body style inherited from horse-drawn carriages. Enclosed cockpits already existed but remained the preserve of a wealthy clientele.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
A close-up of the hub of a Zedel, where the brand name is engraved on the central bolt. The artillery-style wooden wheels reflect early 20th-century automotive design.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
A legacy of Swiss automotive craftsmanship: the leaf springs from a 1906 SAG Pic-Pic sit alongside a detail from the dashboard of a 1911 Stella.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The radiator grille of a 1911 Pic-Pic. Manufactured by Piccard, Pictet.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Examples of the technical sophistication of the pioneers of the motor car: on the left, a Stella’s auxiliary side lamp; on the right, the radiator of a 1912 Martini.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The chamois adorning the bonnet of this 1931 Martini has not always been the brand’s emblem. Introduced in 1924 following the arrival of Swiss engineer Walther Steiger as head of the company, it replaced the rifle – a tribute to the founder, Friedrich von Martini, whose fortune was linked to the Martini-Henry rifle, adopted notably by the British Army.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The name F. Martini.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The running board is named Stella. The bodywork was crafted by the Swiss Coachbuilding Company of Geneva, at a time when coachbuilders played a decisive role in the identity and manufacture of cars, which were often built largely by hand.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Long lost in Uruguay, this 1911 Stella has finally joined the collection of the Martigny Motor Museum following several years of negotiations. Considered to be the only example of its kind in the world, it is powered by a 2,813cm³ four-cylinder engine.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
A glimpse into the interiors of several early 20th-century cars reveals a pioneering era in which elegance and engineering went hand in hand.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
Reminiscent of a snake or a dragon, the horn head on this 1911 Turicum serves as a reminder that, at the start of the 20th century, manufacturers mainly supplied the chassis and engine. Accessories and fittings were often chosen separately, offering owners a great deal of freedom to personalise their cars.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The radiator of a 1911 SIGMA offers a glimpse into one of the models produced by the Société industrielle genevoise de mécaniques et d’automobiles. Its 2,612cm³ four-cylinder engine was built under licence from Knight, a technology which was highly regarded at the time for its smooth running and quiet operation.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
‘Hybrid car’
The story begins earlier than one might imagine. In 1807, François Isaac de Rivaz from Valais filed a patent in France for “a new method of utilising the explosion of gases to drive various machines”. He had already developed what is considered to be the first known internal combustion engine vehicle.
A century later, several Swiss brands had made a name for themselves internationally. Martini, founded in Frauenfeld before moving to Saint-Blaise, became the country’s leading manufacturer. Its cars were exported as far afield as Argentina, Peru, Iraq, Indonesia, Russia, Australia and Great Britain.
In Geneva, the Pic-Pic brand was aiming even higher. The company dreamt of building a genuine “Swiss Rolls-Royce”. That ambition may seem excessive today, but Claude Margueret points out that “Mr Rolls had a Swiss car!”
“Swiss quality has always been highly valued,” he emphasises. Swiss cars stood out as much for their reliability as for the care taken in their construction.
Swiss engineers were certainly not short of ideas either. As early as 1903, the Geneva Electrical and Mechanical Industry Company unveiled a “hybrid car” combining a petrol engine and an electric battery. More than a century before the current wave of hybrid vehicles, the idea was already there.
Technical difficulties, however, prevented its commercial development. Indeed, the history of the Swiss motor car is punctuated by such paradoxes: ideas that were often brilliant but rarely produced on a large scale.
An industry killed off by mass production
So why do we no longer see Martini or Pic-Pic cars on the streets? For Sergio Rossi, professor of macroeconomics and monetary economics at the University of Fribourg, the answer is essentially economic.
Swiss manufacturers produced high-quality vehicles aimed at a wealthy clientele. The problem was that they produced them in small quantities, in a country with a limited domestic market. “Costs remained high and profits insufficient to finance the transition to mass production,” Rossi explains.
While this collection celebrates the pioneers of the Swiss motor industry, the author has an admitted soft spot for another legend: Bugatti.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
In addition to these constraints, there were sometimes external obstacles. At the start of the 20th century, several countries protected their own motor vehicle industries through customs barriers. In 1902, the manufacturer Zedel therefore chose to relocate part of its production to the French municipality of Pontarlier in order to circumvent the rise in customs duties imposed by France.
The Swiss industry was already in a fragile state when the First World War broke out. The conflict disrupted trade and market opportunities. The post-war period then profoundly transformed the sector. While Ford, Citroën and Opel were perfecting mass production methods and producing ever cheaper vehicles, Swiss brands struggled to keep up.
When the car became a mass-produced industrial product, Swiss companies found themselves up against American, French and German competitors with far greater production volumes. “Mass production at Swiss prices doesn’t work,” says Claude Margueret.
It is a blunt assessment, but it sums up the fate of an entire industry. While Ford was producing cars by the hundreds of thousands, Swiss manufacturers continued to focus on quality, precision and the luxury segment. A strategy that was good for their image, but far less so for sales volumes.
A very rare example of the Stella was discovered in Uruguay and underwent a meticulous restoration, taking 2,000 hours, for the museum. Its pedal layout – with the clutch on the left, the brake in the centre and the accelerator on the right – foreshadowed a configuration that would become the norm in the motor industry.
Thomas Kern / SWI swissinfo.ch
The economic crisis of the 1930s ultimately dealt the final blow to many of the survivors. Switzerland’s leading car manufacturer, Martini, went into liquidation in 1934. That same year, Jérôme Donnet from Valais, who had become France’s fifth-largest car manufacturer, also saw his empire collapse under the effects of the crisis.
An enduring ambition
Yet the idea of a Swiss car never completely died out. In the 1960s and 1970s Peter Monteverdi from Basel tried his luck with sports cars produced in small batches. These were the last road-legal cars manufactured in Switzerland and sold to private individuals.
A few decades later, Nicolas Hayek envisaged a small city car inspired by the philosophy that had made Swatch so successful. Once again, the scenario seemed all too familiar. The idea was Swiss, the innovation was Swiss, but the car would ultimately become the Smart, produced abroad.
Switzerland has never produced a car manufacturer on the scale of Volkswagen or Renault. That has not, however, prevented several of its citizens from leaving a lasting mark on the history of the motor car.
Louis Chevrolet (1878-1941), born in La Chaux-de-Fonds, helped found Chevrolet in the United States, which would go on to become one of General Motors’ flagship brands.
Swiss engineer Marc Birkigt (1878-1953) co-founded Hispano-Suiza, whose luxury cars would rank among the most prestigious in Europe.
Jérôme Donnet (1885-1953), from Valais, enjoyed spectacular success in France. After buying out the Zedel manufacturer, founded by Swiss nationals, he built up a group employing some 4,000 workers and producing up to 75 cars a day. In the 1920s, Donnet became France’s fifth-largest car manufacturer before being swept away by the economic crisis of the 1930s.
To find the last Swiss-made car, one must look to Formula 1. The single-seaters designed in Hinwil, canton Zurich, by the team founded by Peter Sauber are the last vehicles to have been developed and built in Switzerland on an industrial scale. But here too, an era is coming to an end: since 2026, the team has been racing under the Audi banner.
A shift towards lucrative components
From François Isaac de Rivaz’s early internal combustion engines to Nicolas Hayek’s projects, Switzerland has never lacked engineers, inventors or entrepreneurs. Its problem has never been imagining the cars of tomorrow. Rather, it has been a question of manufacturing them in sufficient numbers to survive in a market dominated by the giants of mass production.
But while Switzerland is no longer a car-manufacturing country in the traditional sense, it remains a major automotive supplier. According to Swissmem, the umbrella organisation for the machinery sector, the automotive supply industry employs around 34,000 people across 574 companies.
“Switzerland has companies that supply components, others that supply the machinery needed to manufacture them, and still others that supply the necessary materials, such as cables. These are high value-added activities,” notes Sergio Rossi.
Although it has not retained its own car brands, Switzerland has not strayed from the automotive industry. It has managed to carve out a niche for itself in the most specialised segments of the value chain.
Edited by Samuel Jaberg. Translated from French, sub-edited by ts
