Delahaye was a Paris-based manufacturer founded in 1894 by Émile Delahaye in Tours, producing trucks, buses, and limited-run luxury cars alongside commercial vehicles. The company spent its first three decades focused on practical transportation, with no significant motorsport involvement until 1932, when majority shareholder Madame Leon Desmarais instructed director Charles Weiffenbach to reposition Delahaye toward a wealthier, more sporting customer base. A new racing department was established and engineer Amédée Varlet, assisted by chief designer Jean François, was tasked with developing competition cars.
By 1934 Delahaye was setting class records at Montlhéry in stripped and streamlined machinery. The Type 138, a 3.2-litre six-cylinder car derived from the company's truck engines, attracted attention with its pace, while the new Type 135 quickly became the centrepiece of the works effort. Success in the Alpine Trial led to the "Coupe des Alpes" variant, and by the end of 1935 Delahaye had accumulated eighteen minor French sports car victories and a hill-climb programme.
The 1936 season demonstrated the team's wider ambitions: four Type 135-based cars ran at the Ulster TT, finishing second to Bugatti, and a separate entry at the Belgian 24 Hours yielded a 2-3-4-5 result behind a single Alfa Romeo. The same year Delahaye acquired rival French marque Delage, consolidating French sporting firepower.
American heiress Lucy O'Reilly Schell paid for the development of a short-wheelbase "Competition Court" variant, the Type 135CS, purchasing twelve examples and reserving half for her private Ecurie Bleue team. The collaboration brought some of the works effort's most prominent results.
The great challenge of the late 1930s came from the government-backed Mercedes-Benz and Auto Union grand prix programmes. To answer it, Delahaye developed the Type 145, a complex 4.5-litre V12 racer. The car earned the title "Million Franc Delahaye" after René Dreyfus drove a Type 145 to victory in the Million Franc Race at Montlhéry in 1937, averaging 91.07 mph over 200 kilometres and collecting a 200,000-franc government prize. In 1937, Delahaye also ran first and second overall at the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
The following year at Pau, Dreyfus drove an Ecurie Bleue Type 145 to an outright win over the far more powerful Mercedes-Benz W154, exploiting the Delahaye's fuel economy over the German car's superior pace. Another Type 145 finished third in the same race. René Le Bègue and Julio Quinlin had already given the factory a Monte Carlo Rally victory in 1937 driving a standard Type 135. These successes combined with strong French patriotic sentiment ensured brisk sales of road cars through to the German occupation.
Delahaye resumed production of the pre-war Type 135 in 1946, but France's punitive post-war tax regime — which savagely penalised engines above two litres — strangled the luxury and sporting car market. A promising new postwar Type 175 suffered catastrophic suspension failures, requiring expensive customer buybacks. Production dwindled from 573 cars in 1948 to just 36 passenger cars registered in 1953.
The works racing programme effectively ended with the occupation. No significant post-war competition effort was mounted. Delahaye merged with former rival Hotchkiss on 9 June 1954, and Hotchkiss promptly ended car production. By the close of 1954 both companies had been absorbed into the Brandt manufacturing group, and the Delahaye name disappeared permanently.
The Delahaye works team's 1930s programme stands as one of the most remarkable underdog stories in pre-war motorsport. Working without state subsidy and against the full factory strength of Germany's grand prix programmes, the Delahaye team demonstrated that strategic racing — exploiting reliability, fuel economy, and circuit selection — could neutralise raw horsepower advantages. The Type 135 and Type 145 remain highly prized among collectors of pre-war competition machinery, and the 1938 Pau victory over Mercedes-Benz is regularly cited as one of the greatest upsets in grand prix history.