Berliet – a Brief History

Though the Berliet company is known in France as a truck-maker, from 1899 to 1939 it also made automobiles. The founder, Marius Berliet, was an extraordinary character – a self-made man who established his business near Lyon, France’s second city, rather than near Paris where most other French manufacturers were based. Marius Berliet founded an industrial empire which, by 1967, was producing 15,240 trucks a year.

Berliet’s cars were reliable and mechanically solid. In the words of René Bellu “one buys a Berliet not from passion but from common-sense.”