From humble beginnings in a Brussels workshop more than two centuries ago, the D'Ieteren family has grown its car-centred empire into an international success – and one of Belgium’s most valuable companies, worth over €10 billion.
Since 1805, the business has survived Napoleon’s march across Europe, Belgium’s independence revolution, two World Wars and, of course, the transformative arrival of the internal combustion engine.
At D’Ieteren Group’s headquarters on Rue du Mail in Brussels, a private showroom is filled bumper-to-bumper with glittering models.
The 2,300 m² gallery floor showcases around 100 vehicles, from luxury horse-drawn carriages decked out in ivory and mahogany, to iconic motors like Studebakers and Volkswagen Beetles.
The gallery tracks not only how personal transport evolved through decades, but also how the D’Ieteren family adapted their business to survive.
“It’s the history of the family and the business, with the touch of art history to appreciate the pieces itself,” explains gallery curator Danaë Vermeulen, as we begin the tour that she usually gives to visiting car fanatics, motor clubs and companies.
The family business has been handed down from father to son for seven generations, with each new era for the business bringing its own trials and triumph (the D’Ieteren women also “did interesting things”, Vermeulen says, adding that she hopes to someday give them greater prominence in the telling of the family and company history).
Wheels in motion
Jean-Joseph D’Ieteren started in 1805 making wooden wheels at a central Brussels workshop on Rue de Marais, for both carriages and bicycles, catering to the busy passing trade on the nearby Allée Verte along the canal.
Step by step, the ambitious wheelwright worked his way up to crafting full wooden carriages, pouring his heart into a Tilbury wooden model that was showcased at the ‘Exposition generale des produits d’Industrie’ held in Brussels in 1830.
“It was a success. We have the newspapers that were very positive about his project,” explains Vermeulen as we pass a replica of the meticulously crafted wooden carriage.
Unfortunately for Jean-Joseph, praise for his model did not convert into sales. The following month, Belgium was upended by its independence revolution, and he would die shortly after, in January 1831, aged 45.
Parisian luxury in Brussels
After his death, Jean Joseph’s two eldest sons took over the business. Guillaume continued to run the workshop, while Alexandre went to Paris to study design and absorb Parisian good taste. With the Belgian economy picking up, the brothers began to craft luxury carriages for the country’s burgeoning upper classes.
The family moved the workshop to Chaussee de Charleroi in Saint-Gilles in 1873, and shortly after, Alexandre’s sons Alfred and Émile took over the business, renaming it D’Ieteren Frères.
These brothers “take the business to the next level” according to Vermeulen, landing a contract to supply and maintain carriages for the Belgian Royal Family in 1887, and spearheading the move from horses to horsepower.
As the automobile business picked up around the turn of the century, the D’Ieteren family used their coachbuilding expertise to build the bodies for luxury cars. While some carmakers supplied a finished product, others just manufactured the engine and chassis, leaving customers to find a coachbuilder to ‘equip’ their car according to their desires.
D’Ieteren was ideally placed for these commissions. They delivered their first car body to Belgian race car driver Camille Jenatzy in 1897, before relocating to a new workshop at Rue de Mail in Ixelles (where it is still based to this day, although in modernist 1960s offices), to expand and keep up with orders.
War, crisis and American aspirations
D’Ieteren would spend more than 30 years in the luxury bodywork-making business, equipping chassis from 105 different brands including Minerva, Renault, Rolls-Royce and Mercedes. The transition to motor power at the beginning of the 20th century continued despite grumblings from more traditional Belgian customers about the move “de la voiture à crotin à la voiture à potin” (from horse manure to exhaust fumes).
However, the First World War, followed by the Great Depression, hit demand for luxury vehicles: staff numbers dwindled from 500 to 73, and D’Ieteren had to find a way to diversify its business.
Lucien, the grandson of Alfred, took over the company, renaming it Anciens Établissements D’Ieteren Frères.
In 1931 D’Ieteren secured a contract to import American car brands Studebaker, and Piece and Arrow, joined by Auburns in 1934. The last luxury bodies crafted by D’Ieteren left the factory in 1935, as the family turned instead to shipping American cars into Antwerp.
When European import taxes on completed cars began to eat into margins, D’Ieteren rejigged their Rue de Mail workshop to assemble the vehicles in Belgium, using as many local Belgian suppliers as possible.
“The fewer pieces that had to come from America the better. That’s how they kept the cars accessible – and they were very popular cars. It wasn’t luxury like we had before, and the demand was so high that producing in the workshop wasn’t enough,” says Vermeulen.
To cater to rapidly growing demand, D’Ieteren built a production plant in Forest in Brussels, next to a Citroën factory, with the first car assembled there in 1949, a Studebaker.
Catching the Beetle Bug
By the mid-20th century, the idea of the mass-produced popular car was beginning to take off, and the company signed a pivotal contract with Volkswagen to bring the German car brand to the Belgian market. The factory's activities evolved with the assembly of VW’s iconic Beetle, as well as the Transporter, the Karmann Ghia and even the Porsche 356.
D’Ieteren also ventured into the car rental market in the 1950s, offering the option for visitors to rent a Beetle which they could collect at the airport or train station in Brussels. And by the 1960s, the company branched out into insurance, financing and car rental.
Pierre d'Ieteren delivering his first Porsche to King Baudouin, around 1955.
There were bumps in the road. Studebaker ceased trading in 1965, Congo gained independence from Belgium in 1960 and subsequently nationalised D’Ieteren’s operations there, and the Forest factory had to be radically overhauled to make the VW Golf.
“The Beetle was a very simple car to produce,” Vermeulen explains. “The Golf was much more modern and complicated, so you needed different machinery.
In 1970, some 22 years after it was built and a few months before the millionth Beetle made in Belgium left the plant, Lucian’s son Pierre sold the Forest factory to Volkswagen.
“Losing the Congo business, and having to modernise the factory, the bank wasn’t very happy,” says Vermeulen. “Pierre had to make the difficult decision to sell the factory. Apparently, he really cried. That was the end of the industrial activities of D’Ieteren.”
Going global
After the death of Pierre in a car accident in 1975, his son Roland D’Ieteren took over the family business. A “car maniac”, according to Vermeulen, during college and his early career Roland tinkered with race car body designs anchored on VW Beetle engines.
He also began to diversify the family business, gaining a controlling interest in car rental company Avis Europe in 1989, and auto glass company Belron a decade later in 1999.
Belron, a British auto glass repair and replacement group which owns brands like Carglass and Autoglass, is today one of the biggest income streams for the D’Ieteren Group.
Roland D'Ieteren would also play a key role in persuading Audi to take over the Forest plant in 2006. He had been to boarding school with Ferdinand Piëch, Volkswagen Group’s then chairman, and the D'Ieteren and Piëch families would vacation together. Roland even learned German with the Piëch family.
When Volkswagen announced it would halt production of the Golf, it was Roland D'Ieteren who brought then-Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt into contact with Piëch. Incentivised by the promise of subsidies and tax breaks, Piëch agreed that Audi, part of the VW Group, would make the A1 at the plant.
D’Ieteren would later go on to sell its stake in Avis Europe for more than €400 million in 2011, while more recently in 2016, the company ventured outside the auto world and bought Italian notebook manufacturer Moleskine.
Roland retired as chairman of D’Ieteren’s board of directors in 2017 and died at the end of 2020 at the age of 78, as the result of a coronavirus infection.
Next generation
Today, the family business has been passed on to Roland’s son Nicolas D’Ieteren, currently chairman of the board. Nicolas bought out his cousin Olivier Périer earlier this year and now has a controlling 50.3% stake in the business. According to Forbes, he is the second richest person in Belgium, with a net worth of $3.9 billion (€3.62 billion).
The company’s automotive branch remains the official distributor of Volkswagen brands in Belgium, managing sales of Volkswagen, Audi, SEAT, Škoda, Bentley, Lamborghini, Bugatti, Rimac, Microlino and Porsche alongside spare parts and accessories.
D'Ieteren's Ixelles offices.
The group reported revenues of more than €11.6 billion in 2023 and a net profit of more than €500 million.
It is still influential enough in that car business that the D’Ieteren name has been among those floated during discussions this autumn about the future of the Forest site, which current owner Audi is planning to leave.
However, the company is keen to show that it is much more than a car importer and distributor. At its flagship offices on Rue De Mail, the huge ground floor showroom that once exhibited Volkswagens and Audis is now Lucien, a shop selling bicycles. Named after Lucien D'Ieteren.
