AUTO HISTORY
Bill Vance’s auto odyssey travels to France where the odd-looking Citroen 2CV kept Europeans enamored for more than four decades!
The Citroen Deux Chevaux (two horsepower), known as the 2CV, was France's equivalent of America’s Model T Ford, Germany's Volkswagen and Britain's Austin Seven. It was economical, sturdy and affordable and offbeat.
Andre Citroen was born in 1878 in Paris and graduated in engineering from prestigious Ecole Polytechnique. Following success manufacturing chevrontoothed gearwheels and artillery shells during the First World War, he turned his plant to peace-time use in 1919 producing automobiles. His cars were well engineered and popular, and within a decade Citroen joined Renault and Peugeot as France's Big Three.
In 1934 the progressive Citroen startled the world with its Traction Avant model with such advanced features as front-wheel drive, unit construction and torsion bar suspension.
Unfortunately Traction's development had overextended Citroen and it fell under control of its largest creditor, Michelin Tire in 1935. It was a heavy blow to Andre Citroen's pride and he was dead within a year, many said of a broken heart.
Pierre Boulander, Citroen's general manager, carried on. He decided that to complement the Traction they needed a simple, sturdy affordable car. The Traction's chief engineer, Andre Lefebvre, started designing one in 1936 based on a simple parameter: "Four wheels under an umbrella."
The first prototypes were ready by 1938 with 2CV introduction planned for the 1939 Paris Auto Show. The Second World War intervened and it wouldn’t arrive until the 1948 Paris show.
The delay was beneficial as proved by the 1955 discovery of three pre-war 2CVs hidden hours before the German army seized Citroen's Paris factory in 1939. In spite of the Nazi prohibition against building or designing cars, Citroen engineers had continued improving the 2CV during the war.
The early prototypes were quite different than the production 2CV. The original had a flat 375 cc water cooled engine, not the production car's air cooled. The original suspension’s torsion bars were replaced by inter-connected coil springs.
The 2CV was a brilliant, ingenious, yet simple engineering feat. Its platform carried a minimal four-door body with few compound curves to facilitate easy manufacturing. Body panels were ribbed for stiffness, the canvas top could be rolled back and the seats easily removed for picnics or hauling duties.
The air cooled horizontally opposed (flat) engine had overhead valves, two-cylinders, vertically split crankcase, light alloy cylinder heads, hemispherical combustion chambers and an oil cooler. The cooling fan was attached to the front of the counterweighted crankshaft, as was the ingenious generator which required no bearings. The generator/fan/crankshaft assembly was held together by one bolt, eliminating drive belts.
The 375 cc (22.8 cu in.) twin's nine brake horsepower went to the front wheels through an allsynchromesh four-speed transaxle operated by an "umbrella handle" protruding from the instrument panel.
The 2CV's simple yet imaginative suspension had each wheel independently carried on a single curved arm, leading in the front and trailing at the rear. Coil springs for each wheel were housed inside moveable metal cylinders mounted horizontally under the doors on each side of the car.
Each suspension arm was attached to its spring through a pull rod, and the system was interconnected front to rear so that when a front wheel passed over a bump the suspension automatically compressed its companion rear spring to prepare it for the impending shock.
Wheel patter was controlled by fitting each wheel with a springmounted, iron 3.5 kg (7.72 lb) inertia-damping weight inside a vertical cylinder. Shock absorbing was by friction dampers at the suspension arm pivots.
The suspension was extremely soft, providing an excellent ride but allowed alarming body roll in corners. The springs were so compliant it was necessary to mount the headlamps on an adjustable horizontal rod so the beams could be cranked back to earth when hauling a load. The 2CV weighed just over 499 kg (1,100 lb).
Upon its introduction the motoring media treated the Citroen 2CV more like a joke than a real car. But the public loved it. By 1950 production was running at 1,000 a day with a sixyear waiting list, suggesting something about the power of the press!
Improvements appeared over the years, and performance progressed from slow to modest. By 1982, now with 602 cc and 29 horsepower, it could reach 108 km/h (67 mph) and still deliver more than 50 mpg.
Citroen finally ended 2CV production in July, 1990. Despite adding more luxurious versions such as the Dyane and the Charleston, time and technology had passed the little car by.
Over more than 42 years almost seven million of the fascinating little French flivvers were built. With nicknames like "rolling garden shed" and "tin snail" they were loved by millions for their basic simplicity, toughness, versatility and economy, all leavened by an aura of lovely French whimsicality.