Citroen Bids Adieu to Classic Deux Chevaux
It was a quiet adieu to an automotive legend Friday when the last Citroen Deux Chevaux--France’s turtle-shaped car of millions--rolled off the factory line after 42 years in production.
The finale actually took place in Portugal, where Citroen moved production after shutting down its Levallois assembly line near Paris.
There were no public ceremonies at the Mangualde factory, “just a little get-together for the workers who have been making them,” said a Citroen Lusitania spokesman, Teixeira de Abreu.
But many of the Citroen fans worldwide are sure to mourn the demise of the Deux Chevaux--named literally for the “two horses,” or horsepower produced by its chugging air-cooled engine.
It was officially designated the 2CV and came with open-flap side-windows, mattress-like suspension and scrawny tires. More than 3.86 million were sold after the launch at the 1948 Paris Auto show for $650.
Including a van, more comfortable Ami and Dyane versions, and even a four-wheel-drive derivative, more than 7 million Deux Chevaux have hit the roads. Thousands of fans have set up about 300 owners’ clubs worldwide.
The car has been in James Bond films and has been flown hanging from a hot air balloon. It has set world altitude and depth records for a car--climbing to 17,180 feet on Bolivia’s Mt. Chacaltaya in 1953 and going down a salt mine in France’s Lorraine region.
Two Frenchmen, Jacques Seguela and Jean-Claude Baudot, made an 87,000-mile round-the-world trip in a 2CV and once substituted crushed bananas for oil to keep a gearbox working as it crossed a South American desert.
Citroen’s high-tech AX compact will substitute for the 2CV at the Mangualde plant. But Gavin Green, chief editor of Britain’s Car Magazine, said “no car will replace it--there’s no successor in sight. It’s the end of an era.”
He says most owners have an emotional relationship with their 2CV that, like the Volkswagen Beetle and the Mini, has become a motoring legend.
“It’s different but sensible,” said two-time Deux Chevaux owner Green. “And for an old car it’s still quite advanced--it has direct ignition, independent suspension and inboard brakes . . . things that some sports car makers are still making a song and dance about.”
In 1935, Citroen boss Pierre-Jules Boulanger asked his designers to dream up a small, avant-garde car for all classes of folk that would be like “a four-wheeled sofa covered by an umbrella.”
Boulanger demanded enough headroom for an opera-bound gentleman wearing a top hat, but also a car supple enough to transport at least two peasants with a basket of eggs across a plowed field without smashing their fragile cargo. All that without using more than about 2.4 gallons of fuel for 60 miles.
The first wooden mock-ups had one headlamp, a serrated hood that looked like a cheese grater. Functional interior appointments included a roll-back canvas roof, a hand-operated windshield wiper and hammock seats.
When World War II broke out in 1939, Boulanger had all but one of the 250 running prototypes destroyed. He hid the survivor in a barn so the invading Germans couldn’t steal the technology.
Available only in gray at the 1948 Paris launch, the Deux Chevaux had a top speed of 37 m.p.h. Sales soon rocketed, and by 1950 the waiting list was six years long.
Sales began to slacken in the mid-1980s. The 2CV can no longer meet emission laws in Switzerland and Austria, nor safety regulations in Sweden and Finland.
But Green is convinced that life could have begun at 40 for the car that still has a loyal clientele in France, Britain, West Germany, Belgium and Ireland.
“Sales are only dropping because Citroen isn’t advertising--there’s no genuine reason to kill the car. I think they’re a bit embarrassed by it not fitting their high-tech image.”
