The front-wheel-drive Amilcar Compound was technically advanced in design for its era, featuring a monocoque frame made of a light alloy and independent suspension all around. Its engine at launch was a four-cylinder side-valve unit of 1185 cc. The Compound's ambitious use of aluminium in its body structure, and its front-wheel-drive configuration, meant that production got off to a slow start, and although it was launched in October 1937, 584 of the 681 passenger cars produced date only from 1939, with a further 64 produced during the early months of 1940, before the German invasion of May/June 1940 effectively ended civilian automobile production in the Paris region. Production prototypes for an upgraded Compound with an OHV 1340 cc engine were running by the summer of 1939, and this version was scheduled for an October launch at the 1939 Paris Motor Show, but the motor show was cancelled and the launch was postponed – as matters turned out indefinitely – due to the intervention of war which France (and Britain) declared against Germany in early September 1939.