1975 Citroen 2CV. Click image to enlarge

Story and photo by Bill Vance

The Citroen Deux Chevaux (two horsepower), known as the 2CV, was the French equivalent of Henry Ford’s Model T, Germany’s Volkswagen Beetle or Britain’s Austin Seven. It was economical, sturdy and versatile, affordable by virtually everyone.

Andre Citroen was born in 1878 in Paris and graduated in engineering from the prestigious Ecole Polytechnique. Following successfully manufacturing chevron-toothed gearwheels and artillery shells during the First World War, he began automobile production in 1919.

His cars were well engineered and popular, and within a decade, the Citroen company, along with Renault and Peugeot, made up France’s Big Three automakers.

In 1934 Citroen startled the world with its very advanced front-wheel drive Traction Avant model that had such progressive features as unit construction and torsion bar suspension.

Alas, the Traction’s development had overextended Citroen, and in 1935 the company fell under the control of its largest creditor, the Michelin tire company. A broken-hearted Andre Citroen would be dead within a year.

Pierre Boulander, Citroen’s general manager, decided that in addition to the Traction the company needed a simple, sturdy affordable car. He had the Traction’s chief engineer, Andre Lefebvre, start work on this in 1936.

The design parameters were simple: “Four wheels under an umbrella.” The first prototypes were ready by 1938, and the 2CV’s introduction was planned for the 1939 Paris auto show. But the Second World War intervened, and the 2CV finally arrived at the 1948 Paris show.

The delay had been beneficial, as proved by the discovery in 1995 of three of the pre-war batch of 250 2CVs which had been hidden only hours before the German army seized Citroen’s Paris factory in 1939. In spite of the Nazi prohibition against building or designing cars, Citroen’s engineers had worked on improving the 2CV during the war.

These early prototypes were thus quite different than the production 2CV. The original had a flat, 375 cc water-cooled engine rather than an air cooled one in the production model. And springing of the original car was by torsion bars, not the inter-connected coil springs used after the war.

The 2CV was a brilliant, ingenious yet simple feat of engineering. 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 were easily removable for a picnic.

The engine was an air-cooled, horizontally opposed (flat), overhead valve, two-cylinder with a vertically split crankcase and light alloy cylinder heads. It had 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, and no drive belts were required.

The 375 cc (22.8 cu in.) twin’s nine horsepower went to the front wheels through an all-synchromesh four-speed transaxle operated by an “umbrella handle” protruding from the instrument panel.

The 2CV’s suspension was simple yet imaginative. Each wheel was independently suspended by a single curved arm, leading at the front and trailing at the rear with a coil spring for each wheel. These springs were housed inside moveable metal cylinders mounted horizontally under the doors on each side of the car. Each suspension arm was attached to a spring through a 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 wheel spring, preparing that wheel for the impending shock.

Wheel patter was controlled by fitting each wheel with an inertia damper consisting of a spring-mounted 3.5 kg (7.75 lb) iron weight inside a vertical cylinder. Shock absorbing was provided by friction dampers at the suspension arm pivots. The suspension was extremely soft, providing an excellent ride, but allowing the body to roll alarmingly in corners. This necessitated mounting the headlamps on a rod so the driver could crank their beams back to earth when hauling a load. The 2CV weighed just over 499 kg (1,100 lb).

Upon its introduction, motoring writers treated the Citroen as more of a joke than a real car. But the public loved it. By 1950, with production running at 1,000 a day, there was a six-year waiting list. So much for the power of the press.

Improvements were made 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 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 these fascinating French flivvers were built. With nicknames like “rolling garden shed” and “tin snail” they were loved by millions for their basic toughness, versatility and economy, all leavened by a lovely air of whimsicality that only the French could achieve.