My Francophile artist dad, who was a terrible driver, had a sky blue deux chevaux. He used to drop me off at school sometimes in the morning (UK midlands).
For urban driving he typically drove in 2nd or 3rd gear at around 23 mph which was very slow in a straight line and terrifying around corners and roundabouts. I used to see ashen faced drivers out of the passenger window trying to understand why his engine was screaming and the car was lurching at such an extreme angle around the roundabout lanes. He would typically have a car full of stuff which would be rolling around on the floor and it wasn't unusual be hit on the head with an easel or painting under extreme braking evasions. Great cars, spent a lot of time in 2CVs in France too, such character...
I have a GS that is even more beautiful. The dashboard has very nice and soft curves. And of course the radio is between the seats. And has two separated fans. One for cold and other for hot air. 4 disk breaks! http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/michelin/gs/image...
Think we have to agree to disagree. It's extremely interesting, non-conformist but I wouldn't call it beautiful - I have actually seen inside it in real life.
How I miss the "old" internet. These fan made websites used to show up in google serps ages ago. I've never ran into these personal websites in the past 3+ years, no matter how deep I search.
"CV" is for "Chevaux" (horses) but we're talking "tax horses", a calculation used for a taxation system where more powerful vehicles cost more. The current french formula is 0.00018 * [power in kW]^2 + 0.0387 * [power in kW] + 1.34
I once beat a colleague of mine driving is Porsche 911 Turbo in an impromptu street race in a deserted semi-demolished housing scheme somewhere in central Scotland, in an elderly Citroën Dyane.
Yup. With its 602cc engine, it absolutely wiped the floor with the 911. Totally unfair fight, fully 30 seconds faster per mile.
I probably shouldn't have goaded him into the bits that still had speed bumps, eh?
Ten or so years ago, being a Citroen enthusiast since I was a kid, but never got around to owning one, I came across a Citroen farm in New Hampshire—about a hundred miles from where I was at the time, in Massachusetts.
He ended up convincing me to refrain from purchasing the D50 I had my eye on—it was selling for less than three grand at the time, not in mint condition, but with a weathered patina that suited its faded buttery canary yellow just right. The Northeast, he said, given its often extreme weather conditions in winter, uses too much salt to weather driving conditions. I had to be prepared to replacing its chassis in just a couple of years thenceforth, were I to expose it to Boston’s driving conditions.
I wanted that little car to be my every-day commuter here in Boston, it would not have proven feasible to garage it over the winter, so I had to let it go.
In retrospect, having driven in Boston all these years after the fact, not ending up that little car proved a prudentchoice. Cudos to the gentleman Citroen farmer for his sage advice.
Those 2CV are very light. My family were passengers in a drive from Santiago to Valparaiso (Chile) in someone's American station-wagon when a 2CV tried to cross in front of us. We hit them and a passenger from that other vehicle got pinned under the top-of-door frame when the 2CV toppled over. My one-armed dad managed to tilt the vehicle off them so they could be pulled out. She didn't seem extremely hurt.
When I was at school, we studied the specifications document for that car which are really interesting!
The car was designed to transport two farmers with "sabots" (wooden shoes) and either 50Kg of potatoes or a keg.
The whole history of the car is of note, I encourage you to look into it if you are curious!
(cf. http://www.la2cvmania.be/09_TPV_1939_2cv.htm)
For a bit of context, design started in 1935, a third of the french population was still working in farms, although it was declining. I wonder if they thought it could not go much lower than that.
(cf. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_des_trois_secteurs#/media/...)
I wish current design rules followed what's in the memo : the car must be cheap, easy to maintain, easy to understand, the parts expected to wear must be as durable as possible. I quote : « Quality must be impeccable - yet it must affordable ».
I was thinking about the 2CV the other day with respect to drone motors and rollerblades.
A 75%-efficient 1000-watt 20000-rpm quadcopter motor is one horsepower, costs about US$150, is about 50 mm in each dimension, and weighs 250 g. If you couple it to an 8-mm-diameter output shaft, the shaft's surface speed is 8.4 m/s or 30 km/hour. Hook up a 10 cfm cooling fan to remove the 250 watts of heat (the other 25%), mount the shaft between sprung two ball bearings that press it up against a rollerblade wheel, and you have a one-horsepower roller skate.
An average human can wear two such skates at a time, thus providing deux chevaux of power, 1500 W, which is 180 N (the weight of 18 kg) at 30 km/hour or 1100 N at 5 km/hour, plenty of power to burn rubber. Accelerating a 100-kg human to 30 km/hour requires 3.5 kJ, 2.3 seconds at two horsepower, limited in practice by traction. Most of the time you would be using much less power than that, and of course you need active traction control so you don't burn rubber every time you pick up your foot and put it back down, but this seems like a tractable engineering problem.
If your average net power usage (losses to air resistance, road roughness, rolling resistance, and round-trip losses from regenerative braking) is 100 watts, a two-hour trip is 0.7 megajoules. This is considerably lower than the average power usage of a Citroen 2CV because a human has a lot less air resistance than a car, even with a helmet and kneepads.
You could provide this energy with 1.9 kg of lithium-ion batteries in a backpack, costing about US$300, but plausibly you could make it cheaper by using high-discharge-rate lithium cells for half or a quarter of that (US$75 or US$150) and US$40 of deep-cycle lead-acid batteries (4 kg) for the rest.
The "2CV" in the car name was kind of a tax fraud, though. An actual Citroen 2CV offered 9 horsepower even at the beginning and 29 horsepower by the end, which is a lot more than you can strap onto your feet even with modern drone motors.
On the other hand, if you used a larger shaft, you could get the skates to go a lot faster than a 2CV could. But I'm not sure that would be a good idea.
> The "2CV" in the car name was kind of a tax fraud, though.
It was not, the taxable horsepower and the “actual” horsepower are completely different things, as the former is derived from displacement (and / or gear speed at a fixed rpm). There was no fraud because this was how it was expected to work.
From my point of view, making the taxable horsepower a completely different thing from the actual horsepower is a fraud. Maybe you mean that the fraud was perpetrated by the tax office and not Citroen?
You’re certainly entitled to your incorrect opinions, but there is no fraud there, nobody past the age of 15 would have been confused by “actual horsepower” (ch) being different from “taxable horsepower” (cv).
They’re simply two completely different units, historically barely related (although since 1998 the french taxable horsepower does depend at all on the actual horsepower which previously was not the case, and since 2020 it is only a factor of the actual horsepower).
Fiscal horsepower is a tool of taxation, incentivisation, and segmentation.
No it wasn't because from the start these were called "chevaux fiscaux" and nobody was mistaken the 2 kinds of horsepower.
At the time nobody cared about the real horsepower anyway. Until the late 80's the only benchmark that people view in term of car performance capability was the top speed and at a lesser level the 0 to 100kph numbers. The first speed limits had been introduced only in 1974 and at first been presented as temporary measures.
Italy similarly had, and possibly still keeps around for backwards compatibility, the same sort of large "cavalli fiscali", used exclusively as a measure of tax brackets, not of actual power.
Not car-specific but I do miss the days of huge paper catalogues. The multi-volume RS ones were great, but the real joy was something arcane like an optics, RF or connector company.
I was convinced to throw away my relatively small and likely valueless but prized collection to well-intentioned "decluttering" when I moved to my own house. The thing is, they actually did spark joy, as Marie Kondo would say.
Also data books. Sure, electronic formats are objectively better in nearly every sense from weight, dead tree count and Ctrl-F-ability, but nothing says you know what you're about better than a well-thumbed Philips data book.
I remember reading the data sheets for various computers, like IBM or Sun machines. I later worked for Sun, and I think those data sheets is one reason I joined.
Surely someone must have collected scans of these data sheets somewhere? I'd love to look through some of them again. There is some on bitsavers, but I'd like to see some more.
I would absolutely love that, they'd be a proud member of my "nerd shelf"! But strictly only if I'm definitely not depriving you of something at all valued!
The 2CV is an interesting car to drive. It has very little power and the gear stick pokes out of the dashboard. It's a comfortable ride and you can peel back the cloth roof cover on a sunny day. Unfortunately it's not great at protecting the occupants in the event of a crash. Its doors are really thin and there are no air bags. Its design is very simple. Here is a video of a 2CV being dismantled and reassembled in 5 minutes by a few people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo1Z5072xr4
There's also the story of the man who was driving a 2CV in the desert, hit a rock and ruined his front axle, and converted the remains in a two-wheeler to make it back to civilization alive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMWgSgB4sg
That's a funny video, but I suspect a lot of the parts were already disconnected, I've rebuilt the gearbox on one and getting the engine out took a lot longer than that!
The 2CV was the first and last car my mother owned that had a had a hand crank start. I think we only bought it because of the Tintin related marketing material. The carburettor controls were front and centre, presumably for live adjusting the fuel richness as you ascended a Pyrenean cirque. I saw the famous twin engined version in Berlin a few years ago for a mere six figure euro price tag.
The Mehari [1] (red car on front page) was an amazing car (4 wheel drive), that was used by the French military for a while and later became very emblematic of the St-Tropez area of France in the 60's and vacationing there.
They're still very much wanted and go for a large multiple of their original new price. They are also probably one of the lightest and most dangerous four wheeled production cars ever manufactured.
Yes, that's true whatever came out of Detroit in those days would classify as an armored vehicle now. The steel on those things was a time and a half as thick as your typical EU economy car. That showed up in the kerb weight as well.
This has just reminded me that as a kid I used to nag my parents to visit car dealerships and collect car brochures. My parents were too risk averse to buy anything like a Citroen, but they were clearly the most forward thinking company. I remember the Citroen XM being the most futuristic car I'd ever read about, but now the cheapest hatchback has far more advanced technology!
Even in the 1990s, a Xantia would be a cheap way to buy a luxury suspension. Still amazes me that my '74 DS and my '98 Xantia can use the same hydraulic fluid. Even the pressure spheres are interchangeable, although not advisable.
The Xantia probably has the best of the hydraulic suspension systems that were ever on the market (including MB, which is a ridiculously fragile system). The XM is more comfy but the Xantia is far more reliable mostly because it is a somewhat simpler system (cheaper car, so less complexity = more profit but incidentally also more reliability).
The very worst was the SM, which overcomplicated just about everything. If you open the hood on one you'll have at least six "WHY?"'s going through your head at once, the kicker being the rotating shaft over the top of the engine to drive a pump on the other side of the block.
The Xantia can have the classic hydraulic suspension (hydropneumatique) identical to the Citroën BX or the Hydractive II system with an electronic calculator on board and more "spheres". The XM had the first Hydractive system.
I've heard them referred to as the "tin snail" in the UK, but I'm not sure how common that is.
I had one of the last ones, in the early 1990s; it was a bit of a pain to maintain.
in French, "la Deudeuche" [de-duhsh], for a very roughly approximated anglicised pronunciation ([dø.døʃ] is the proper IPA, but I feel like it wouldn't resonate with everyone... at least I would have no idea).
Scariest (and most exciting!) automotive experience I've ever had was in a 2CV, being thrown around the west german hill passes in one of those things felt like a near-death experience every corner...
With today's regulations the car would have to look fundamentally different, so your best bet is to make the conversion yourself, or pay someone to do it!
With so many e-bikes popping up, with extra cargo space and even seating for 2 people (electric rickshaw bikes), I wonder if we can go full circle and bring back old cars like 2cv or Model-T with significant speed limits of 30kmph and reduced safety requirements. More and more european cities are starting to have 30kmph speed limits.
To people already preparing to explain how ridiculous that idea is, I know :)
It's more of a pipe dream. Just physically makes no sense to carry around 60kg of an ultra lightweight car (estimate taken from lightest Shell eco-marathon prototypes) instead of the 40kg of the heaviest ebikes. Not sure if there's any feasibility wiggle room.
I've been a big fan of Citroëns for a long time, but I cannot quite get the 2CV. I get it's cute, but I think the Dyane is actually cuter. I can see how it lives up to André Citroën's 1930s vision, but what has always truly captured me is the engineering in the hydropneumatic suspension.
Fortunately, my first car was (and is) a Citroën DS 23. I have not tried Citroën's new suspension (seems to be limited so far to the kind of car, I don't particularly care for), partly because I've grown disgruntled with Citroën since about the time PSA (or whatever they are called now) started the DS brand, but I really ought to.
The 2CV makes perfect sense if you look at why it was designed: 'an umbrella with wheels'.
The Dyane is much better as a car but it was also a bit more expensive and people really loved the 2CV for its lines and thought the Dyane to be too blockish.
My second car was a DS (a DS 21 to be precise), I loved it and ended up touring the former east bloc with it (and ended up living in Poland because of it).
Was your DS 21 pre- or post-1968? Basically, did it have the red or the green fluid? I once drove mine from Denmark to Provence and back again, it was an experience, and not without problems (it started to leak around Paris). I am not sure I would make that big of a trip in it again (although, some part of me hopes I will). Since those days, I've mostly made the big trips in my '98 Xantia.
I've done plenty of really long trips with it (many thousands of km), but I did replace all of the accessible high pressure LHM tubing at some point to get rid of the periodical 'Arret!' light on the dash because the system lost pressure. I can also tell you from experience that trying to drive a DS without pressure is both an art and a body building exercise at once.
Xantia is a great compromise between 'modern' and 'old fashioned', a bit plasticy but the one I had I drove into the ground over many 100's of thousands of km. The final nail in that particular coffin was to lose the headgasket somewhere between Munich and NL and just continuing the trip, it even got decent fuel economy but it wouldn't start up after being shut down and once we looked into the engine it was declared a miracle that it made it all the way back. Great car, all around and given the distances covered ultra reliable.
The real problem in the DS model is the semi-automatic gearbox which is super finicky regarding hydraulics levels (you'll notice a ticking sound when it is trying to engage and can't quite make it due to a lack of fluid, you can temporarily fix that under the hood by forcibly actuating it but driving it like that is really not recommended. Nor is driving it when one of your drive shafts breaks and you block up that side of the drive train. Nice low engine revs though, we jokingly called it 'economy mode'.
I also had an ID-19, a simpler but altogether far more robust car.
My mechanic also tells me I'm fortunate that my DS is a five speed manual. No semi-automatic gearbox for me. Also makes the engine bay a lot more accessible (although it is injection). So far, I've replaced the headgasket, cylinders, water pump and injection distributor (with one that achieves lower revs in neutral). The engine repairs were substantial, since water had leaked into one of the cylinders, but it was possible, and now it just starts when I turn the key.
My Xantia is the Activa V6 model. That ES9 engine is a beast. I've been told that it's usually the car, not the engine, that breaks first with those ones. But really, what I was more interested in was the Activa suspension. It feels like driving a go-kart, yet with the suspension of a Bentley, and the practicality of a hatchback. I know they were trying the same sort of anti-body roll for the DS back in the 1960s, but money was always running out (unfortunately, I cannot seem to find the pictures, I know they exist online somewhere).
I intend to keep my Xantia around for a long time. Took it to the US once, and drove from coast to coast and back again.
Activa V6 is amazing, those are super rare to begin with and I've only driven one once. Cornering in that thing is the weirdest experience initially and afterwards every other car except for high end sports cars feel 'off'.
DS with a five speed manual is the best combo, keep an eye on your steering housing (those tend to go slowly but failure is potentially catastrophic) and front carrier arms, the bushings will wear out and then you'll start to eat tires. Other than that, your main enemy is chassis rust, everything else can be fixed.
My understanding is that only 2700 Activa V6 were ever built. I doubt half of those have survived. Now and then, one will appear for sale, and they disappear about as quickly as they appear. I remember rushing across country to pick up mine as soon as it went on sale.
I've recently bought a house with room for a workshop. I've known for a while that the steering on the DS was an issue that needed fixing. Now that I will finally have room to work on it, I look forward to start fixing this among other issues. Including fixing the wiring for the thermostat to the dashboard.
Fixing the steering on a DS is a major operation, make sure you get the shop manual and if you can practice on a junker before doing it on your real car, it is probably one of the most labor intensive jobs you could do on that car.
Rebuilt units can be bought, they're better than the originals and should last the (remaining) lifetime of the car, I would definitely recommend against trying to rebuild one yourself, they are super finicky to work on and require a ton of specialist tooling (and experience) to do the work properly.
Note that there are right and left hand drive versions of these. Also there typically is a charge if you don't give them your old one for rebuild in return after you've completed the transplant, and, of course there is a huge difference between the 'red' and the 'green' version, which has to do with the sealing materials used, the 'red' system uses a hydraulic oil which is extremely corrosive.
Obviously, after replacing the steering housing you'll need to have the car aligned again, and while you are at it you may as well replace CV boots and ball joints since it is mostly just the price of the materials at that point.
Fortunately, I have a "fixer", who is extremely familiar with these vehicles (it's basically all he does), so he would be able to get me some proper units, and would be well aware if I am being overcharged. Indeed, just looked at his site (that I built for him), he does have a replacement unit for sale for ~800 euro (with VAT).
Good! Have fun, you'll learn more about your DS than you ever wanted to know. I've rebuilt a DS bit-by-bit while it was in use and I would have much rather had the time to do things in a more planned manner. Engine rebuild is a nice chapter in its own right, the 21 is the best engine and you could get a junked engine and rebuild that at leisure, they are very doable.
That sound from the Citromatic used to be called 'boinking' and it is inescapable unless the fluids and seals are up to snuff. Citroën hydraulics are detailed but not that complex, patience + Viton aftermarket seals (green fluid = hexylene glycol) are your friends.
Agreed that the ID (idée)-19 had a lot of advantages from its simplicity.
> Citroën hydraulics are detailed but not that complex
Have a look behind the left hand front wheel cover panel and say that again :) There has to be at least 50 meters worth of high pressure line behind there and a functional analog computer using hydraulics. That's what keeps the car balanced front/back and left/right. The height adjusters just do the static balancing for load, that thing on the left front does it dynamically with a response time in the 10's of milliseconds and keeps continuous track of what 'level' means to the car occupants. It is a very impressive piece of engineering which has some components that will leave you completely puzzled (a tube with a few hundred metal plates in it with a tiny hole through the middle, for instance) if you don't know what they are for.
The 2CV always seemed like a death trap to me. It could not get approved in the USA for import; I’m guessing because of safety regulations…although no Citroen cars were available in the US at all.
Afaik it could be sold in the US just fine (this is a car created in 1948, safety regulations were not really a thing).
The issue is that it could not be sold: it was particularly low-powered even for french cars of the time, the original model barely reached 40 mph (out of a 9 hp engine), and the later fastest models topped out around 70.
The 2CV had literally been designed to cross freshly ploughed fields and drive on unpaved roads, it just was not suitable for the interstate-expanding American market.
I had one of the faster models but even those could not reliably overtake a truck, chances are that when you tried to come out ahead of the lee of the truck you'd be blown back. More than once I had to sheepishly fall back all 60 feet to go back behind and let others pass.
My mom drove a 2cv in LA - it got imported from Europa (not sure if it was from Denmark or France) as spare parts in order to get it ‘on the Road’ ;-)
This was ca. 1983.
She still have it but drives a ‘74 beetle daily.
I remember (when briefly living in LA) that we drove it from LA to Las Vegas in july (also in the mid 80’ies). It was HOT!
People always got shocked when the hood was piped open and showing of an engine that have the size of a lawn mower (relative to the typical V8)…
Citroën sold cars in the US till around 1975, when the US introduced regulations that essentially prohibited the hydropneumatic suspension. Citroën even had US spec versions of the DS and the SM for the US market.
I am not sure whether the 2CV was ever sold in the USA, but it has definitely been imported. I think in the US, the limit is 25 years before you can import a foreign car. I've encountered plenty of 2CVs and Méharis in North America.
I lived in the USA in 70s and 80s. I never saw more than 1 or 2 Citroen cars in all of that time. And those two cars were stared at by everyone like aliens.
Someone please explain why 2CV was produced for so long (1949-1990) - even in communist countries which were technologically backwards production of 2CV's contemporaries (like FSO Warszawa) was long stopped (1973 in that example).
The 2CV was inexpensive and indestructible. It was perfect for 3rd world nations that the French had colonized. The 4 wheel independent suspension could go over worse potholes on unpaved roads than you have ever seen. And if something did break, you could either fix it with a coat hanger or find a nearby shade tree mechanic with enough experience to get the job done. I fell in love with it back in the '60's and wanted to bring one back to the states. Of course, it would never pass a safety inspection. The nearest thing I could find was a beetle.
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For urban driving he typically drove in 2nd or 3rd gear at around 23 mph which was very slow in a straight line and terrifying around corners and roundabouts. I used to see ashen faced drivers out of the passenger window trying to understand why his engine was screaming and the car was lurching at such an extreme angle around the roundabout lanes. He would typically have a car full of stuff which would be rolling around on the floor and it wasn't unusual be hit on the head with an easel or painting under extreme braking evasions. Great cars, spent a lot of time in 2CVs in France too, such character...