Citroën 2CV
An umbrella on four wheels: the simple French car built from 1948 to 1990.
Citroën’s head, Pierre-Jules Boulanger, wanted a car for farmers that could carry two people and a basket of eggs across a ploughed field without breaking them. Work began in the 1930s but was interrupted by the war.
The car was shown in Paris in 1948 and became a symbol of the simple and practical. Flaminio Bertoni gave it its form, and it was built for over forty years.
Materials: Sheet steel, fabric roof, tubular seats
Manufacture: Mass-produced by Citroën in France and several other countries.
A ribbed, undulating bonnet and separate wings.
A fabric roll-top that can be opened completely.
Long suspension travel that makes the car lean steeply in corners.
An air-cooled two-cylinder boxer engine drives the front wheels. The suspension is soft and links the front and rear wheels on the same side, and the fabric roof can be rolled back. The name means two fiscal horsepower.
Corrugated sheet metal on the bonnet in the early years, round headlights on stalks, and doors and wings that can be lifted off.
There was a van, an off-road version with two engines called the Sahara, and the Dyane, Ami and Méhari were based on the same technology.