The story of the Citroën 2CV is well known. Pierre-Jules Boulanger's "umbrella on four wheels" was designed to enable two farmers to drive 100kg of foodstuffs to market at 60km/h over France's nasty, rutted rural roads of the time. It could use no more than three liters of fuel to travel 100 kilometers, and it had to cross a farmer's field without breaking a cargo of eggs. Citroën's Michelin masters hid a prototype during wartime occupation, and by 1949 went into limited production.
Aimed at the working class, the 2CV was chock full of fairly high technology for its day, including front-wheel drive, inboard front brakes, an aircooled flat-twin engine, interlinked four-wheel leading arm/trailing arm independent suspension, a four-speed manual trans and a fabric sunroof. (At the same time, roll-up side windows were considered too complex.) The body was constructed of a dual H-frame chassis, with aircraft-inspired tubular framework, and a very thin steel shell (it was originally to be aluminum, but the material proved too pricey in the post-war economy). The four-stroke, 375cc flat-twin engine, inspired by a pre-war BMW motorcycle design, put out just nine horsepower at launch. A 425cc engine arrived in 1955, and for 1968, displacement jumped to 602cc, and output soared to a massive 28 horsepower.
Despite the presence of some remarkable technology that wouldn't be seen on some other cars for years to come, if ever, the French press had a field day calling it all sorts of nasty names: sardine can and the uncharitable "rolling aberration," among others. (The now-legendary "snail" tag didn't come along until later.) But Citroën's intent, to make the French version of a People's Car, was spot-on: France collectively clutched the little car to its breast. Within months, there was a three-year waiting list, and a second hand 2CV cost more than a new one. By 1950, Citroën was producing 400 2CVs a day, but demand had hardly subsided. The 2CV put the French worker on wheels in a way that no pre-war car could. And the success spread: Production started in Chile and Argentina to satisfy the South American market.
Plenty of variants were spawned over the years: the more conventionally bodied Ami 6 and Ami 8, the size-up Dyane, the Jeep-like Mehari, and others. Several of these were floated as 2CV replacements, but the 2CV outlived them all. A rare two-engined version, the Sahara, saw fewer than 700 built in a decade of production.
Its price was likely a factor in this success: In Germany in the '60s, a 2CV sold for roughly half of what a VW Beetle cost. But unlike the VW Beetle, which was rigorously and invisibly updated year to year, the 2CV simply lived on, and on, and on. The addition of front disc brakes in the early '80s was cause for alarm.
As more efficient designs came on the market and sold better, the 2CV slipped into the kitsch niche; like the VW Beetle in America, it attracted a non-conformist crowd. Protesting consumer culture and advancing technology (i.e., nuclear power) by buying a car that looks like three million others and made its corporate masters untold billions of francs over a several-decade period doesn't make a lot of sense on the face of it, but there you have it. Owning a 2CV became more than simple possession--it became a political statement in and of itself.
There was even a 2CV homage of sorts, in its own lifetime: Nissan launched the limited-production S-Cargo minivan based on its teeny Micra platform in the late '80s; the two-door panel van looked quite snail-like, particularly in its popular salmon paint scheme, and bore more than a passing resemblance to the 2CV.
Production of the French legend ceased in 1988, and two years later, the Citroën factory in Portugal cranked out the last of the 2CVs. Over 42 years, 3,872,583 2CVs were produced. Mix in the other Citroën models that used 2CV underpinnings, and you're looking at something north of nine million cars. Not quite the 10 million old-school Minis or 20-odd-million rear-engined VW Beetles, granted, but more than enough to secure a place in popular French legend and lore. We're a little surprised that Citroën hasn't thought of a nouveau-retro heritage 2CV along the lines of the New Beetle, new Mini, Fiat 500, et al.
Normally, we'd ask what happened, why such an iconic machine overseas could fall on its face here in the States. But this time out, the answer seems pretty obvious: Citroën's 2CV was diametrically opposed to everything America thought a car should be. While the Beetle was accepted on these shores with open arms, the 2CV, ostensibly fulfilling the same end of the market, crashed and burned. It could fit in the trunk of your Buick Electra; your riding mower at home could beat it in a straight-up drag race. The hot ones had 28 horsepower? Two cylinders? Jeez, even the Beetle made do with four, and it was perilously slow, too. The suspension seemed made of rubber bands, which made the body tip luridly over in turns; the tires were as thin as the middle finger you'd extend while it was creating the traffic jam you were in. Fuel efficiency? With ethyl at a quarter a gallon, who cared? And it missed the farmers' market completely: American agriculturalists vastly preferred their pickup trucks. When even the American counterculture manages to become a culture of its own and still won't embrace you, you're done.
Some sales estimates put American 2CV sales at a thousand units total, and when ever-changing DOT regulations made Citroën's back-stock unsalable for 1970, the company crushed them rather than send them back to France. In truth, the cost of shipping it here in the first place made it price-uncompetitive, which also didn't help sales numbers. What to make of a car that cost more to ship across the water than to build?
Today, the 2CV sounds like it could be a recipe for a city car in today's over-crowded, $3 a gallon world. Could America finally be ready?
