Automoto 1912 Catalog — Garantie and the Head Badges (Page 6)

— Page 6 —
GARANTIE

Nos machines sont garanties contre tous vices de construction résultant d’un défaut de matière ou
de fabrication. Cette garantie est limitée à la réparation ou à l’échange gratuit des pièces
reconnues défectueuses.

Afin d’éviter toute confusion, nous rappelons à nos Clients que toutes les pièces de nos vélos sont
poinçonnées à la marque AUTOMOTO. Sur le tube de direction est fixée la marque ci-dessous :

Bicyclette Populaire.

On the badge shown beneath that line:

SOCIÉTÉ NOUVELLE
DE
CONSTRUCTIONS
MÉCANIQUES
DE LA LOIRE

AUTOMOTO

St ETIENNE
(LOIRE)

Bicyclette Luxe.

On the second badge:

AUTOMOTO

[One leaf from an Automoto catalog, the guarantee clause and the two head badges that go with it.
The text is the whole of the firm’s warranty: defects of material or of workmanship are covered,
and the remedy is repair or free exchange of the part, nothing more. Then comes the useful part.
Every component of an Automoto bicycle is stamped with the marque, and the badge fixed to the head
tube identifies which machine the buyer has.

Two badges are reproduced. The Bicyclette Populaire carries a tall oval enamel plate: the parent
company name curved around the top in five lines, AUTOMOTO across the middle in a scrolled cartouche
and St ETIENNE (LOIRE) at the foot, with a fixing hole top and bottom. The Bicyclette Luxe carries a
smaller badge shaped as a four-leaf clover with AUTO to the left of the stem and MOTO to the right,
the clover already doing the work the wordmark would do on its own for the next fifty years.

The company name on the Populaire badge is worth reading twice. It is the Société Nouvelle de
Constructions Mécaniques de la Loire, not the Société de Constructions Mécaniques de la Loire that
appears under the title on the 1905 Villon poster held as document 69689. The word Nouvelle marks a
reconstitution of the company between the two sheets, and the head badge carries it.

This is the identification page a collector wants, which is why it was excerpted: it settles what an
Automoto head badge of the period looked like and which model it was fitted to.]