Citroens may not have been the favourite of Australian mechanics, but now the brand’s gone we’ll miss the quirky brilliance of cars like the 2CV.
Which brand has been selling cars the longest in Australia without a break? Ford? Mercedes-Benz? Rolls-Royce? Nope. The rather incredible answer is Citroen, which signed its first deal with a local importer in 1923, meaning 101 years of continuously running sales here.
Alas, it’s no more. Years of disastrously sluggish sales means it’s been axed from Australia, leaving behind a back catalogue of some incredible cars, some terrible ones, and a hardcore mob of Citroen enthusiasts wondering where it all went wrong.
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French car fans are a loyal and sometime obsessional lot. Be it Peugeot, Renault, Citroen or more obscure marques, once you fall deep for these Frenchies, it’s hard to escape. I’ve personally owned three (two Peugeot 205s and a Renault 19), which I look back on fondly despite cracking dashboards, brittle engines, imploding clutches and body panels so flimsy they rival a snail’s shell for crash protection.
I’ve met mechanics who simply won’t touch French cars, especially Citroens. Later ones have a well-earned reputation for dodgy reliability, poor build quality, parts being hard to find, and there are often time-sucking side-steps required to complete what should be simple tasks.
And you don’t want to tackle something like the Citroen DS’s wonderful hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension without special tools and ample experience.
Complex escargot
From Citroen’s greatest hits, you could pick the aforementioned DS, the Traction Avant, SM, GS and – for some Aussie history – the 1923 5CV which was the first motor car to lap our country back in 1925.
But it’s the 2CV which is Citroen’s most distinctive. No archetypal French scene is complete without a Deux chevaux in the picture. Launched in 1948, almost four million were sold before production ended in 1990. They were incredibly lightweight (roughly 600kg) and featured a front-mounted two-cylinder air-cooled engine and the most basic of interiors.
The 2CV or “tin snail” is renowned for excellent ride quality thanks to long suspension travel, despite basically riding on bicycle tyres. The original brief, so the legend goes, is it had to be capable of driving over a French ploughed field at speed and not break any eggs held in a basket. A cheap car to persuade rural French folk away from their horse and cart, and today the car’s a bona fide classic with climbing values to match.
For extra distinctiveness, in the 1980s the 2CV came as a Dolly edition with two-tone paint schemes. There was red and white, green and white, blue and cream and more, but most striking was the example pictured. We call it pale yellow and maroon, but it sounds better in the French: Jaune Rialto et Rouge Delage.
Vielle garde
Its owner – who asked to remain anonymous – is quite the Citroen obsessive. Parked beside his Dolly is a 2015 C4 Picasso seven-seater used for daily family duties, while the work van’s a 2010 Berlingo. Mechanical skills to keep his French fleet running are a necessity, but he says it’s just an accepted part of owning these cars.
“My dad always had French cars for rallies,” he explains. “They were mostly Peugeot 504s, so I learned to drive in one of those. Then Dad bought me a 1963 Renault 4, for $20, which we pulled apart, but it ended up being too rusty.” Ah, happy memories when you could buy a running car for the price of a day’s shift behind a bar.
“This was in 1985, so the cars weren’t even that old” he says. “The second one we bought for $25 was better, it was a 1968 model. But I didn’t really appreciate the engineering until I got a Citroen GS and we pulled that apart. It was so cool how the hydraulics worked, how you gas up the suspension spheres and giving different rides through different pressures in the valving.”
Then there was the Citroen GS’s flat-four air-cooled engine. “It’s not like your normal engine,” he explains. “There’s no head gasket, no radiator cap, and it doesn’t sound rattly like an air-cooled Volkswagen. It had awesome suspension ride when compared to my friends’ in their Ford V8s. I could keep up with them in my little 1.2-litre four-cylinder, but had to rev the hell out of it, up to 8000rpm and it was fine. It’d still do 150km/h.”
The father and son pairing have owned roughly 20 Citroen GSs combined, but the allure of a 2CV eventually struck. In 2003, he found this Dolly. “It was in pretty bad condition,” he explains. “It wasn’t running, there’d been a fire under the bonnet, it was missing a headlight and it had rusted really badly. After getting it started, when taking it home the floor ruptured, so it was driving pretty funny.”
Bon vin
It’s amusing how casually this is mentioned. But for those of us who’ve spent a life buying old cheapies with countless problems “we’ll be able to sort no worries,” having a rusty floor collapse and seeing the road beneath is all part of the charm of classic car ownership. Sort of.
“Despite its problems, I paid $3,500 for it, as it’s a rare car in Australia,” its owner says. “There are probably only 300 or so on the road. Mine’s a UK import with 1984 on the registration, but I think it could be an ’86, or even an ’89 as it has dim-dip headlight wiring in it, which the UK needed at that time.”
The rust was so bad (blame salty UK roads) he needed to source a whole new chassis, then bought new panels for from the firewall all the way to under the rear seat. “Parts like these are pretty easy to get as there are three or four good online shops which ship to Australia,” the owner says.
The metal panels are only 0.6mm, so a specialist TIG welder was employed for the delicate work. “The thickness is very hard to deal with as it buckles very easily with heat. You blow holes in it if you use any other welder, so you must TIG it and clamp it in the shape you want, otherwise you won’t get the doors on.”
The 2CV’s body still looks in excellent shape all these years later, as does the paint. The Dolly model is based on the Spécial edition, fitted as standard with Citroen’s 602cc engine, rather than the smaller and rather undercooked 435cc two-cylinder, mated to a four-speed manual transmission.
It has a roll-back sunroof with new heavy-duty canvas and flip-up windows, so driving in the rain is quite the experience. “Even when you’ve got everything shut the air pushes in the water while driving, so you still get wet,” the owner says.
With the steering at full lock the caster angle looks extreme. Combined with those skinny 125 R15 Michelin radial tyres, the 2CV offers a unique driving experience. It somehow holds the road, but body lean is simply outrageous. Apparently you can’t roll a 2CV going forwards (unless first hitting something), and you can enjoy numerous YouTube videos of people trying to do so. Most only manage when they drive it in reverse and slam the steering wheel down.
This 2CV Dolly has a compact interior with basic chairs, massive bus-like steering wheel, manual column shift and a small electric fan mounted to its dashboard to try to compensate for no air conditioning.
“There are monthly maintenance things,” says its owner. “You’ve got to grease the nipples on the kingpins and grease the driveshafts, as they have two movements, then the usual oil checks and oil change. It doesn’t take much oil, only two-and-a-half litres, as it’s such a small engine.”
Au revoir
While power-to-weight ratio is helped by these 2CVs having mass similar to a slab of beer, the two-cylinder’s roughly 21kW is quite challenging. “You’ve really got to drive it to keep up with modern traffic,” says its owner. “It can be a bit hairy in the wind, like trucks coming the other way blow you around, and I avoid motorways. The engine really needs to be revved, although you don’t know to what as there’s no rev counter, but I’ve had it over 100km/h before. It really sings then.”
He admits “I’d be toast” should this little lightweight 2CV be involved in an accident, but perhaps that’s part of the thrill and charm of these quirky Citroens. “There’s the style, the history, the way they drive and the comfort,” he says about why there’s the enthusiasm for such cars. “They’re not performance cars nor exactly reliable, but they handle so well.”
Many car brands have come and gone from Australia with barely a footnote, but Citroen and cars like its unmistakable 2CV will be sadly missed. They really don’t make ‘em like this anymore.