Recalling the Citroen 2CV

    2CV—“two  horses”  The name refers not literally to two horse power but to the tax category into which the car fit and by extension the creatures whose services it supplanted in rural France.   The car became

France

’s “people’s car” but it was cruder by far than the Volkswagen Beetle or Fiat 500 or Mini, other national cars.   The late automotive writer  L.J.K. Setright called it  "the most intelligent application of minimalism ever to succeed as a car.”

               Driving in the country one day in 1935, the story goes,  Citroen’s chief,  Pierre-Jules   Boulanger found himself in a small farming village on market day,  surrounded by peasants and their animals.  He said he immediately envisioned a car for peasants to take goods to market—a car radically simpler and cheaper than existing models, an “umbrella on wheels.”   He ordered up designs: it should carry four people and 100 kilos of potatoes and have a suspension that could carry eggs across a plowed field without breakage. 

Developing what Citroen called  the Toute Petite Voiture—"Very Small Car"—was assigned to engineer André Lefèbvre,  who had created modern front wheel drive with the 1934 Traction Avant, and pretty much bankrupted the company in the process.    Before World War II, several prototypes were completed.  They had  single headlights, corrugated metal body parts and crank starters and were hidden away in 1940 and during the occupation.  

               In the three years after the war, the design was completely reworked, the engine changed and  the body panels reshaped by Citroen’s top designer Flaminio Bertoni.  A new air cooled engine was devised, in part inspired by a BMW motorcycle engine. The car was unveiled at the 1948

Paris

auto show.  Soon there was a waiting list of years; eventually Citroen produced some five million and introduced many variants. 

               Chrysler offered a concept of a vehicle for rural

China

in the 1990s inspired by the 2CV.  The CCV or Composite Concept Vehicle was to be made of panels of plastic recycled from soda bottles and bolted together.  The Chinese hated it.    As inspiring a design example the 2cv might be the car was so crude that it is hard to imagine a retro modern version of it, on the order of the New Beetle or Fiat 500 or Mini. 

                Two recent designs take inspiration from the 2CV. 

They are by independent designers, the Italian Paolo Martin, a veteran of Bertone and Ghia and Frenchman David Portela, whose concept was created in 2005. 

Meanwhile, 2CVs  labor on in Partist tourist attraction and have inspired many fervent fan clubs. 

               Nothing says more about the 2CV than the fact that the only car Samuel Beckett seems ever to have owned was a gray 2CV.  He refused for years to upgrade.

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