Thursday, June 16, 2011

Citröen


On the way to my astronomy meeting last night I found myself behind this car. It was amazing to study it from behind. One of the more obvious things was how narrow the tires were. I looked the car up in Wikipedia: The Citroën 2CV (French: “deux chevaux” i.e. “deux chevaux vapeur”, literally “two tax horsepower”) was an economy car produced by the French automaker Citroën between 1948 and 1990. It was technologically advanced and innovative, but with uncompromisingly utilitarian unconventional looks, and deceptively simple Bauhaus inspired bodywork, that belied the sheer quality of its underlying engineering. It was designed to move the French peasantry on from horses and carts. It is considered one of Citroën's most iconic cars. In 1953 Autocar in a technical review of the car wrote of "the extraordinary ingenuity of this design, which is undoubtedly the most original since the Model T Ford". I have no idea what year this car was manufactured - It is a CV6, so perhaps 1970's or 1980's. But here is the funny part, from a website, referring to the fact that the car is under powered: "The car will go from 0 to 60 MPH in a day." Others jokingly said they "had to make an appointment to merge onto an interstate highway system".

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very cool! Thanks for all the info. Did you have to pass around it?
Joan

Ken Spencer said...

No, I followed it for a couple of miles, then it turned off the main road. I was dying to follow it, because it was headed to a residential area, but I didn't want to freak the driver out by following him. No guts, no glory...