Nostalgic Cars: Citroen Gs

that engine, not because we always had to wait for it to “rise”. It was fascinating, first the back would rise, then the front — clever suspension as they said!

My curiosity got me visiting my old man one day just to find out more about this eccentric car. It was a hot summer afternoon when I just decided to pop into his office by surprise. My visit seemed somewhat serious, he must have thought whatever I came for was serious or special. And special it was! After some small talk, I looked at him and I blurted it out, “How did you find the Citroen GS when you had it?” I said he must have thought my visit serious or special, I think special is the word because he smiled hard and leaned back into his chair as it rocked back and forth. With his eyes staring at the snow-white ceiling he passed a grin and answered, “It’s the best car I’ve ever driven!” The smile lasted longer than the smile I saw when he saw me. It got my heart aching even more, he has had better cars after it but still up to today he insists that was his best drive. I wish I could just drive it for a day and experience why he said it floated on the road no-matter how bad the road. Oh my heart! The GS!

Most of these Citroens suffered a slow death with almost none of them still running today, up until now I have not seen one that is still running even after researching for so long. He did mention that even then decades ago when he had the GS, spares were a bit of a problem to find and only a few people understood its clever suspension and the bits of trickery under the hood.

The suspension was clever as it could go up and down, controlled hydraulically. It had another special talent. I wouldn’t know if this was by design or it was a default talent but the car could drive on 3 wheels! You could drive a GS without the forth back wheel, it would just somehow balance itself out. The clever suspension meant the car had little to no body roll and was the perfect car for cornering at high speeds.

Just like DS, the GS was a little underpowered with 1220cc and later a 1300cc engines. They were flat four with horizontally opposed cylinders, what we would call a boxer engine today. It was not very fast but it was fast enough. The lightweight body covered up for the low power output. Though it looked bulky, it only weighed about 900kgs. The engines were high revving air-cooled engines. On long trips, he said the exhaust would turn red but still make newer cars sweat to keep up. Something about air-cooled engines and withstanding heat. On motorbikes, such engines rev even up to 12 000revs without breaking a sweat. Impressive stuff !

Citroen attempted to create a faster GS with a rotary type engine that was more powerful than the air-cooled one. It was called the GS Birotor, I’m not sure if any ever made it to Zimbabwe. Its fuel consumption was high and did not attract that much of a market. Maybe it’s because it was way more expensive. About 800 units were sold until Citroen decided to abandon the project. Because of the poor sales, they also attempted to buy back all the GS Birotors to scrape them so they would not need to support such a small number of cars with spares.

The GS initially came with a 4-speed manual gearbox with a semi automatic option. The semi-automatic was clutch-less but required one to shift the lever to change to next gear. It was the sequential manual gearbox of

the time. Later on, a five-speed manual was introduced in the GSA model and it made highway driving more of a breeze even though the high revving motor was okay revving the red line away in forth gear.

The hydro-pneumatic suspension just like on the big brother the DS meant the car was a breeze to drive and hugged the road quite tightly even at high speeds. Those who had a chance to ride in it said, it was like a magic carpet, some said it rides like a boat and some said it did not feel like it drove on something as rugged as the earth!

All that remains are memories now as many have been scrapped. Overtime, the complicated suspension proved too much to handle. The cars became expensive to maintain, spares slowly became scarce and rust took its toll on most of them. The GS was a gem of its time, it’s quite unfortunate that they didn’t make them to last the century.

Give us feedback on your experience if you have similar classics in your garage or if you have owned one. @lovert116 Automart Used Spares Centre – Quality Used Japanese Spares

+263 772 33 99 38 facebook: @automartusc