At the end of 1933 Peugeot’s Paris concessionaire
Emile Darl'mat introduced Marcel Pourtout to
Georges Paulin, a dentist with a flair for coachwork design. He became Pourtout’s lead designer.
Richard Adatto, author of a book on French aerodynamic styling of the era, has been quoted as saying: "Paulin became the leading French stylist of the time...Everything he touched was designed with aerodynamics in mind. He was very conscious of fuel efficiencies and the aerodynamic efficiencies that could be created by the lines of the car. You could go faster, which meant you could put a smaller engine in the car and it could go faster even though it was a small car." Pourtout, Darl'mat and Paulin collaborated in the creation of the revolutionary
Eclipse roof, a design of
retractable hardtop that had a special mechanism, patented in Paulin's name, to stow it out of sight in the car’s boot. Carrosserie Pourtout produced Eclipse versions of the
Peugeot 301, 401, 402 and 601, the
Lancia Belna, and models from
Hotchkiss and
Panhard. For the
1937 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race Carrosserie Pourtout collaborated with Emile Darl'Mat to create the bodies for three identical cars that utilized modified Peugeot 402 engines in modified 302 chassis. In the 1937 race The Darl'mat Roadsters placed 7th, 8th and 10th overall. They returned
the following year, and the entry driven by De Cortanze won the under-2 litre class. In 1937 and 1938 Carrosserie Pourtout made a road-going version of the Le Mans cars, the Peugeot 402 Darl’Mat "Spécial Sport", which had a total production run of 106. == Major prewar works ==