The designer of the very first TGV, Jacques Cooper, has died, we learned on Wednesday from the train manufacturer Alstom, where he worked in the 1970s and 1980s.
Born in 1931, Jacques Cooper was 93 years old. During his career, he also designed tractors and helicopters before specializing in railway equipment “whose exterior design became his great specialty” according to a biography entitled “Cooper, the man who designed the TGV” .
He will be remembered as the man who gave the TGV its distinctive silhouette, with its tapered, aerodynamic nose and its first orange livery, which has become legendary in the French railway world.
A story beginning in 1972
Jacques Cooper first imagined the style of the very first “turbotrain”, the TGV-001, a prototype designed in 1972 to allow the train to reach speeds between 250 and 300 km/h, still unheard of at the time.
This TGV will never be put into commercial service, but during the launch of the very first high-speed train between Paris and Lyon, Jacques Cooper will again be responsible for its design and will rely largely on the style of the TGV-001.
Both the silhouette and the orange color were retained and in 1981, the TGV appeared at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, under the eyes of the President of the Republic at the time, François Mitterrand.
A symbol of French pride
This is the start of a rail adventure which will mark France by considerably reducing travel times in the country. The TGV will become a symbol of national pride regularly brandished by the country's leaders to illustrate France's industrial success.
“We are moved at Alstom to learn of the disappearance of Jacques Cooper,” declared its CEO Henri Poupart-Lafarge. “He will have forever marked the railway sector, notably by designing the characteristic nose of the orange TGV, which opened the way to high speed in France. We send our thoughts to his family and loved ones,” he added.
Designer of the Porsche 914-6 Murène
Jacques Cooper has other important achievements such as the Porche 914-6 Murène, which inspired the design of the TGV and the metros of Santiago (Chile) and Cairo (Egypt).
More than 40 years after the appearance of the TGV in France, the SNCF is preparing to receive by the end of 2025 a new generation of high-speed trains, the TGV-M, whose exterior design generally retains the lines and shapes imagined by Jacques Cooper in the 1970s.