Citroën Dyane

One man’s love affair with the minimalist ‘grown up 2CV’.

The Dyane was Citroën’s idea of a grown-up 2CV and was a strong seller in the UK. We meet a couple who loved theirs so much they had it rebuilt to better than new standard.

Citroën as a brand may now be pinning its hopes on what are little more than bejewelled Peugeots as it attempts to play on the famous DS badge, but back in the ’70s the French brand really did offer a different motoring experience.

I speak from experience, having spent my formative years in the back of a GS estate and more recently having been the keeper of a CX Turbo... but for the real Citroën diehards it’s the air-cooled twins which are really what it’s all about. By which of course we mean the models descended from the 2CV: the Bijou, Méhari, Dyane and the Ami.

Mike Barker is one of these. “I’ve always had Dyanes,” he told us, his Citroën experience beginning in the early ’70s when the Dyane was first imported to the UK. He had in fact grown up with rather more traditional cars including Triumph Herald and Vitesse, later graduating to a Spitfire. In a story familiar to many readers, that Spitfire was sold to fund the purchase of a first house and its replacement was a cheaper car in the shape of a Dyane.

Fast forward a few years and when Mike found himself living in Hampstead he embraced the image of a young single man about town with the purchase of a Datsun 260Z, which with its straight six was quite a jump up from the 602cc Citroën.

Once again though, the property market was to intervene, when after meeting Ursula while skiing in Austria in 1978, the Datsun coupe was sold to raise the funds for another house purchase. Its replacement? Yup, another Dyane.

This beige Dyane was destined to stay on the scene until the mid 1990s, by which