Citroën 2CV

Citroën’s 2CV is hilarious, ingenious, hugely practical, very comfy, stylish, fashionable and almost free to run once you’ve bought a good one. Unfortunately, that good one is not as cheap as it used to be, though you should still be able to find one with a solid floor/chassis for under £8000. However, if you do plump for a cheaper and rougher example, the chassis are only simple bits of flat tin so they’re very cheap if you’re prepared to take the not outrageous amount of time it takes to fillet the car and fit a one. If you do that, fit a galvanised chassis as the naked ones rust faster than MGB sills.

When bimbling in a forwards direction in a 2CV, you need to have patience, as the engine is a 602cc air- cooled flat twin. However, you don’t need quite as much patience as you might think, once you know that the big end bearings are not fragile shells but Vinnie-Jonestough roller bearings. The 2CV is intended to be thrashed flat out all the time, that’s how you drive them. There is a rev limit imposed by the small carb bore and the inlet tract design, but the idea is that you run the engine at full throttle and flat out in each gear until it won’t spin any faster, then twist and shove the weird push/ pull dash-mounted gear lever into the next gear and floor it again. On that basis you can make quite reasonable progress, although hills are an issue. When fourth gear progress starts lugging up a hill and the Romanian trucks start tailgating, go down a gear, keep your foot to the floor and maybe have your passengers read to you from P. G. Wodehouse. When going backwards, do it gently and carefully as enthusiastic reversing can cause the gearbox to ‘unwind,’ which is as crunchy and expensive as it sounds.

When going around corners, rejoice in the screams of terrified novice passengers as the 2CV tips over at a truly alarming angle. The terror subsides and is replaced by amused respect as it sinks in that a 2CV is almost impossible to turn over without the use of a kerb or racetrack kitty-litter. Oh yes, people race these, and I strongly recommend attending such an event: entry will be £2.50 rather than the £250 it costs to get stuck in the parking mud of an F1 event, and 2CV racing is gladiatorial. 2CVs are all driven by very nice people, frequently professionally nice people such as counsellors and social workers, and the strain of being nice all the time is released as they morph into feral monsters on the track.

It’s not risk-free like Formula One though, because a roll cage works better if it’s attached to a car rather than a biscuit tin, and you could probably fold a 2CV door in half across a wooden gate. Which brings us to the downside: the impecunious fuel sipping and cheap new chassis happen because the car only weighs 1300lb. The structure of a 2CV is as flimsy as a promise from a politician, and if you get hit hard, you have a problem. They offer slightly better protection than a scooter, but should also be driven as defensively as a scooter.

2CVs are increasingly fashionable, hence the getting expensive, but there are

some variations that are less fashionable and thus cheaper. Dyanes were a sort of semi-posh variant with such snobby luxuries as sliding rather than flip-up side windows, but they are now less popular than a standard 2CV. Fourgonette vans are cool, but as expensive as Mini vans. The Lomax is also a fine option, a kit trike conversion with an ugly but charming GRP body. Even lighter than a 2CV so it’s faster, or at any rate less slow, and even cheaper on fuel – you might get 75mpg out of a Lomax.

Summer is the top time for driving a 2CV. The canvas roof rolls all the way to the back, the half-windows flip up and clip up, and there are big vents beneath the windscreen. However, in the winter you will need a coat, and something to check is the condition of the wired cardboard tubes that convey slightly less frigid winter air from the exhaust manifold into the cabin. These can disintegrate and fall on the exhaust, at which point the 2CV becomes a bonfire that would keep you briefly warm if you didn’t know there was a petrol tank to keep clear of. This happened to me, but the 2CV in question was a rusted-out dog.

Some owners have rather more faith in the heater’s abilities though, and driving a 2CV in the winter is a fine if chilly idea because deep snow doesn’t even slow them down. Their moped Michelin tyres and featherweight contact patch are extremely effective in snow and mud, and some 2CV enthusiasts get a lot of fun from driving past stuck Range Rovers. The original design brief of the car was that it should be effective as a farm vehicle as well as being the most cost- effective of passenger cars. Originally it only had one light at each end – any more would have been showing off, and might have spoiled the French peasants for whom it was intended.

£8000 should get you a pretty good 2CV with a recent chassis that is clear of rust, but you could halve that cost by buying a nasty but retrievable example. A new chassis is just a few hundred pounds, and the mechanicals are also cheap and simple. Electrics are minimal, with rusty earths being a common but easily sorted problem, and the engine is definitely DIY repairable. The rest of the mechanics are weird, but also approachable and inexpensive to deal with. Some special tools are required, but joining a Citroën club gets access to those. The Citroën Specials club is also welcoming and sociable, and cheerfully tolerates ordinary 2CVs as well as specials.

One styling and financial bonus shared with Land Rovers is that 2CVs look more convincing when they’re beaten up and wrinkled. I had a shiny Dyane that got slightly squashed front and back in a line of parked cars in Kensington when a spoilt brat in daddy’s Porsche lost control and crashed. It was financially a write- off, but I kept the car and didn’t bother with any repairs. It then looked authentically wrinkled, as if it had come from Paris after a few years of French street parking. If you go for solid substructure and an annual MoT for common sense and safety but also embrace authentic battered 2CV chic as a style statement and regard driving cars painted the same colour all over as preening, that brings the budget way down.

One styling and financial bonus shared with Land Rovers is that 2CVs look more convincing when beaten up and wrinkled