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Citroen 2cv pages
- ur-whale 4y agoThe Mehari [1] (red car on front page) was an amazing car (4 wheel drive), that was used by the French military for a while and later became very emblematic of the St-Tropez area of France in the 60's and vacationing there. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_M%C3%A9hari https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_M%C3%A9hari
- jacquesm 4y agoThey're still very much wanted and go for a large multiple of their original new price. They are also probably one of the lightest and most dangerous four wheeled production cars ever manufactured.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoIt reminds me of Volkswagen “Thing”.
- jacquesm 4y agoCompared to the beetle it's a tent on wheels. The beetle is quite strong for a car designed in those days.
- userbinator 4y agoCompared to a 2CV, I agree; but it was definitely less substantial than the average American sedan back then.
- jacquesm 4y agoYes, that's true whatever came out of Detroit in those days would classify as an armored vehicle now. The steel on those things was a time and a half as thick as your typical EU economy car. That showed up in the kerb weight as well.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoThe Thing is not the Beetle. Different cars.
- jacquesm 4y agoAh that one, sorry I didn't know it was marketed as the 'Thing'. Yes, lots of parallels with the Mehari there. And with the Moke, similar concept but using Mini parts.
- jonasdegendt 4y agoI just saw a yellow one today! The way they’re cambered makes them look so cool.
- jaclaz 4y agoVery few Mehari's were 4x4. As a side note what was really interesting was the (very rare) 2CV "Sahara" (it was 4 wheel drive with two engines): https://buy.motorious.com/articles/features/316288/this-citroen-2cv-that-challenged-land-rover https://buy.motorious.com/articles/features/316288/this-citr...
- petercooper 4y agoThis has just reminded me that as a kid I used to nag my parents to visit car dealerships and collect car brochures. My parents were too risk averse to buy anything like a Citroen, but they were clearly the most forward thinking company. I remember the Citroen XM being the most futuristic car I'd ever read about, but now the cheapest hatchback has far more advanced technology!
- jacquesm 4y agoThe cheapest hatchback still doesn't have that suspension though.
- Svip 4y agoEven in the 1990s, a Xantia would be a cheap way to buy a luxury suspension. Still amazes me that my '74 DS and my '98 Xantia can use the same hydraulic fluid. Even the pressure spheres are interchangeable, although not advisable.
- jacquesm 4y agoThe Xantia probably has the best of the hydraulic suspension systems that were ever on the market (including MB, which is a ridiculously fragile system). The XM is more comfy but the Xantia is far more reliable mostly because it is a somewhat simpler system (cheaper car, so less complexity = more profit but incidentally also more reliability). The very worst was the SM, which overcomplicated just about everything. If you open the hood on one you'll have at least six "WHY?"'s going through your head at once, the kicker being the rotating shaft over the top of the engine to drive a pump on the other side of the block.
- hyakosm 4y agoThe Xantia can have the classic hydraulic suspension (hydropneumatique) identical to the Citroën BX or the Hydractive II system with an electronic calculator on board and more "spheres". The XM had the first Hydractive system.
- wafriedemann 4y agoVery cool. Would be even better if they included pricing.
- jacquesm 4y ago2CV: 4500 dutch guilders, Dyane 4800, AMI 6250, GS 8000, D-Special 12000, DS 17000. For French Francs multiply by three or so, German Marks divide by 1.10. I was in a crash in a 2CV, it was my first car and after that never got into another one. The damage was incredible given the kind of accident it was.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoThe 2CV always seemed like a death trap to me. It could not get approved in the USA for import; I’m guessing because of safety regulations…although no Citroen cars were available in the US at all.
- Svip 4y agoCitroën sold cars in the US till around 1975, when the US introduced regulations that essentially prohibited the hydropneumatic suspension. Citroën even had US spec versions of the DS and the SM for the US market. I am not sure whether the 2CV was ever sold in the USA, but it has definitely been imported. I think in the US, the limit is 25 years before you can import a foreign car. I've encountered plenty of 2CVs and Méharis in North America.
- haunter 4y agoThe GSA had a beautiful dashboard https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FL0xd9wXMAAdIm8.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FL0xd9wXMAAdIm8.jpg
- jacquesm 4y agoYes, it pre-saged the dashboard of the later CX (the DS replacement).
- drewzero1 4y agoThat's glorious! The 70s and 80s were a wonderful and weird time for automotive design. I see echoes of it in the interior of my early 90s Saturn. https://img.hmn.com/900x0/stories/2016/11/1991-Saturn-SL2-Interior-C7050-R87-0003.jpg https://img.hmn.com/900x0/stories/2016/11/1991-Saturn-SL2-In...
- userbinator 4y agoDefinitely has the "futuristic 80s" look. I think that style lasted into the mid 90s and then started becoming more subdued.
- ur-whale 4y agoOooh, so star-trek-y. Very nice.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- timc3 4y agoThink we have to agree to disagree. It's extremely interesting, non-conformist but I wouldn't call it beautiful - I have actually seen inside it in real life.
- jamexcb 4y agoI have a GS that is even more beautiful. The dashboard has very nice and soft curves. And of course the radio is between the seats. And has two separated fans. One for cold and other for hot air. 4 disk breaks! http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/michelin/gs/images/36.jpg http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/michelin/gs/image...
- nwatson 4y agoThose 2CV are very light. My family were passengers in a drive from Santiago to Valparaiso (Chile) in someone's American station-wagon when a 2CV tried to cross in front of us. We hit them and a passenger from that other vehicle got pinned under the top-of-door frame when the 2CV toppled over. My one-armed dad managed to tilt the vehicle off them so they could be pulled out. She didn't seem extremely hurt.
- jansan 4y agoDid the 2CV have a nickname in other countries? Here in Germany it was called "the duck" ("die Ente"). Oooh, that suspension, great memories :)
- jacquesm 4y agoSame here in NL 'de eend'. There's a whole raft of wordplay jokes on that name. As for the suspension, it's the only car that you can scrape the mirrors with while it's still on all four wheels ;)
- m2fkxy 4y agoin French, "la Deudeuche" [de-duhsh], for a very roughly approximated anglicised pronunciation ([dø.døʃ] is the proper IPA, but I feel like it wouldn't resonate with everyone... at least I would have no idea). short for "deux chevaux", i.e. ... 2CV.
- forinti 4y agoI heard a joke in Uruguay that they were called "pedo" (fart) because only the owner could like it.
- throwaway744678 4y agoIn french, it is pronounced "2 chevaux", as in "2 horses" (horsepower), abbreviated "deuche", or "dodoche"
- shrx 4y agoIn Slovenia it's called "spaček" - a diminutive masculine form of "spaka", i.e. "monstrosity".
- gvurrdon 4y agoI've heard them referred to as the "tin snail" in the UK, but I'm not sure how common that is. I had one of the last ones, in the early 1990s; it was a bit of a pain to maintain.
- forinti 4y agoThe Pallas DS was such a beautiful car, they should resurrect it as an eletric car.
- jacquesm 4y agoThere is a group in the UK converting them (sacrilege!): https://www.electrogenic.co.uk/cars/electric-citroen-ds https://www.electrogenic.co.uk/cars/electric-citroen-ds
- janlukacs 4y agoHow I miss the "old" internet. These fan made websites used to show up in google serps ages ago. I've never ran into these personal websites in the past 3+ years, no matter how deep I search.
- alex_duf 4y agoI wonder if there's a way to twist the arm of a search engine into revealing these gems
- frozencell 4y agoI'm not sure if this can help but those personal websites [0] seem to be often made with Adobe Dreamweaver if we look at the page source code. [0] http://www.citrobe.org/br70s.htm http://www.citrobe.org/br70s.htm
- olivermarks 4y agoMy Francophile artist dad, who was a terrible driver, had a sky blue deux chevaux. He used to drop me off at school sometimes in the morning (UK midlands). For urban driving he typically drove in 2nd or 3rd gear at around 23 mph which was very slow in a straight line and terrifying around corners and roundabouts. I used to see ashen faced drivers out of the passenger window trying to understand why his engine was screaming and the car was lurching at such an extreme angle around the roundabout lanes. He would typically have a car full of stuff which would be rolling around on the floor and it wasn't unusual be hit on the head with an easel or painting under extreme braking evasions. Great cars, spent a lot of time in 2CVs in France too, such character...
- spaniard89277 4y agoMy granpa had one and he always said it was fantastic for snow.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoNot car-specific but I do miss the days of huge paper catalogues. The multi-volume RS ones were great, but the real joy was something arcane like an optics, RF or connector company. I was convinced to throw away my relatively small and likely valueless but prized collection to well-intentioned "decluttering" when I moved to my own house. The thing is, they actually did spark joy, as Marie Kondo would say. Also data books. Sure, electronic formats are objectively better in nearly every sense from weight, dead tree count and Ctrl-F-ability, but nothing says you know what you're about better than a well-thumbed Philips data book.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoI have a couple of volumes of RS data sheets sitting on the shelf in my shed, that I cannot bear to throw out. Yours if you want 'em.
- adhesive_wombat 4y agoI would absolutely love that, they'd be a proud member of my "nerd shelf"! But strictly only if I'm definitely not depriving you of something at all valued!
- lokedhs 4y agoI remember reading the data sheets for various computers, like IBM or Sun machines. I later worked for Sun, and I think those data sheets is one reason I joined. Surely someone must have collected scans of these data sheets somewhere? I'd love to look through some of them again. There is some on bitsavers, but I'd like to see some more.
- woobar 4y agoFord catalogues from the same time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32298524 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32298524
- amelius 4y agoThey should really make a modern retro version of the 2CV, like they did with the MINI and VW Beatle. It's such an iconic car.
- iancmceachern 4y agoTotally, it was so clever and revolutionary in many ways. I put it on the same pedestal as you say with the Mini and Beetle.
- sbarre 4y agoWonder if they could make an electric version of the wagon? It could be great as a short-haul utility/delivery vehicle...
- RalfWausE 4y agoNow... my parents have this for driving around town: https://elektrofrosch-berlin.de https://elektrofrosch-berlin.de I think its a good successor of the spirit of the 2cv
- Doxin 4y agoOh man that thing is amazing! I would LOVE if a bunch of goods transport could be substituted with those. I'd not be opposed to driving one myself.
- sbarre 4y agoAmazing!
- spaniard89277 4y agoI wonder why so many german companies have only german in their sites.
- RalfWausE 4y agoBecause they ship (mostly) in germany ;-)
- classified 4y agoThe presentation style of those catalogs is just wonderful. And hose hippie colors! Today‘s presentation styles are mind-numbingly dull in comparison.
- YVoyiatzis 4y agoTen or so years ago, being a Citroen enthusiast since I was a kid, but never got around to owning one, I came across a Citroen farm in New Hampshire—about a hundred miles from where I was at the time, in Massachusetts. He ended up convincing me to refrain from purchasing the D50 I had my eye on—it was selling for less than three grand at the time, not in mint condition, but with a weathered patina that suited its faded buttery canary yellow just right. The Northeast, he said, given its often extreme weather conditions in winter, uses too much salt to weather driving conditions. I had to be prepared to replacing its chassis in just a couple of years thenceforth, were I to expose it to Boston’s driving conditions. I wanted that little car to be my every-day commuter here in Boston, it would not have proven feasible to garage it over the winter, so I had to let it go. In retrospect, having driven in Boston all these years after the fact, not ending up that little car proved a prudentchoice. Cudos to the gentleman Citroen farmer for his sage advice.
- jacquesm 4y agoWhat is a D50? I know quite a few Citroen models but not that one and google isn't helping.
- bufordtwain 4y agoThe 2CV is an interesting car to drive. It has very little power and the gear stick pokes out of the dashboard. It's a comfortable ride and you can peel back the cloth roof cover on a sunny day. Unfortunately it's not great at protecting the occupants in the event of a crash. Its doors are really thin and there are no air bags. Its design is very simple. Here is a video of a 2CV being dismantled and reassembled in 5 minutes by a few people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo1Z5072xr4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo1Z5072xr4
- jacquesm 4y agoThat's a funny video, but I suspect a lot of the parts were already disconnected, I've rebuilt the gearbox on one and getting the engine out took a lot longer than that!
- sbarre 4y agoThere's also the story of the man who was driving a 2CV in the desert, hit a rock and ruined his front axle, and converted the remains in a two-wheeler to make it back to civilization alive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMWgSgB4sg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFMWgSgB4sg
- jaclaz 4y agoWhich was tested (and debunked) by Mythbusters but other people actually managed to create motorcycles from 2CV's: https://citroenvie.com/those-who-have-made-the-brave-attempt-to-convert-a-2cv-into-a-motorcycle/ https://citroenvie.com/those-who-have-made-the-brave-attempt...
- Normille 4y agoAh. Memories. I actually learned to drive in a 2CV. Brilliant wee motors. I'd love to have one again. Just to play around in.
- gorgoiler 4y agoThe 2CV was the first and last car my mother owned that had a had a hand crank start. I think we only bought it because of the Tintin related marketing material. The carburettor controls were front and centre, presumably for live adjusting the fuel richness as you ascended a Pyrenean cirque. I saw the famous twin engined version in Berlin a few years ago for a mere six figure euro price tag.
- Gordonjcp 4y agoI once beat a colleague of mine driving is Porsche 911 Turbo in an impromptu street race in a deserted semi-demolished housing scheme somewhere in central Scotland, in an elderly Citroën Dyane. Yup. With its 602cc engine, it absolutely wiped the floor with the 911. Totally unfair fight, fully 30 seconds faster per mile. I probably shouldn't have goaded him into the bits that still had speed bumps, eh?
- RicoElectrico 4y agoSomeone please explain why 2CV was produced for so long (1949-1990) - even in communist countries which were technologically backwards production of 2CV's contemporaries (like FSO Warszawa) was long stopped (1973 in that example).
- morninglight 4y agoThe 2CV was inexpensive and indestructible. It was perfect for 3rd world nations that the French had colonized. The 4 wheel independent suspension could go over worse potholes on unpaved roads than you have ever seen. And if something did break, you could either fix it with a coat hanger or find a nearby shade tree mechanic with enough experience to get the job done. I fell in love with it back in the '60's and wanted to bring one back to the states. Of course, it would never pass a safety inspection. The nearest thing I could find was a beetle. .
- RicoElectrico 4y agoInteresting, I've seen my friend post a video not long ago with a 2CV in shot, that was in Paris. You'd think France as the Western Europe would focus more on safety and emissions (apparently French are very climate conscious).
- adamjb 4y ago2CV's do around 6L/100km which is comparable to modern town cars
- jaclaz 4y agoYep, the "other" (inexpensive and indestructible) car was the Renault R4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renault_4
- frozencell 4y ago> 3rd world nations that the French had colonize Do you really think they were "nations"?
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- hyakosm 4y ago"CV" is for "Chevaux" (horses) but we're talking "tax horses", a calculation used for a taxation system where more powerful vehicles cost more. The current french formula is 0.00018 * [power in kW]^2 + 0.0387 * [power in kW] + 1.34 https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheval_fiscal https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheval_fiscal (current formula, french page) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_horsepower#France https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_horsepower#France (general explanation)
- kragen 4y agoI was thinking about the 2CV the other day with respect to drone motors and rollerblades. A 75%-efficient 1000-watt 20000-rpm quadcopter motor is one horsepower, costs about US$150, is about 50 mm in each dimension, and weighs 250 g. If you couple it to an 8-mm-diameter output shaft, the shaft's surface speed is 8.4 m/s or 30 km/hour. Hook up a 10 cfm cooling fan to remove the 250 watts of heat (the other 25%), mount the shaft between sprung two ball bearings that press it up against a rollerblade wheel, and you have a one-horsepower roller skate. An average human can wear two such skates at a time, thus providing deux chevaux of power, 1500 W, which is 180 N (the weight of 18 kg) at 30 km/hour or 1100 N at 5 km/hour, plenty of power to burn rubber. Accelerating a 100-kg human to 30 km/hour requires 3.5 kJ, 2.3 seconds at two horsepower, limited in practice by traction. Most of the time you would be using much less power than that, and of course you need active traction control so you don't burn rubber every time you pick up your foot and put it back down, but this seems like a tractable engineering problem. If your average net power usage (losses to air resistance, road roughness, rolling resistance, and round-trip losses from regenerative braking) is 100 watts, a two-hour trip is 0.7 megajoules. This is considerably lower than the average power usage of a Citroen 2CV because a human has a lot less air resistance than a car, even with a helmet and kneepads. You could provide this energy with 1.9 kg of lithium-ion batteries in a backpack, costing about US$300, but plausibly you could make it cheaper by using high-discharge-rate lithium cells for half or a quarter of that (US$75 or US$150) and US$40 of deep-cycle lead-acid batteries (4 kg) for the rest. The "2CV" in the car name was kind of a tax fraud, though. An actual Citroen 2CV offered 9 horsepower even at the beginning and 29 horsepower by the end, which is a lot more than you can strap onto your feet even with modern drone motors. On the other hand, if you used a larger shaft, you could get the skates to go a lot faster than a 2CV could. But I'm not sure that would be a good idea.
- masklinn 4y ago> The "2CV" in the car name was kind of a tax fraud, though. It was not, the taxable horsepower and the “actual” horsepower are completely different things, as the former is derived from displacement (and / or gear speed at a fixed rpm). There was no fraud because this was how it was expected to work.
- surmoi 4y agoWhen I was at school, we studied the specifications document for that car which are really interesting! The car was designed to transport two farmers with "sabots" (wooden shoes) and either 50Kg of potatoes or a keg. The whole history of the car is of note, I encourage you to look into it if you are curious! (cf. http://www.la2cvmania.be/09_TPV_1939_2cv.htm http://www.la2cvmania.be/09_TPV_1939_2cv.htm) For a bit of context, design started in 1935, a third of the french population was still working in farms, although it was declining. I wonder if they thought it could not go much lower than that. (cf. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_des_trois_secteurs#/media/Fichier:Population_active_et_emploi_par_grand_secteur_de_1806_%C3%A0_1990.svg https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loi_des_trois_secteurs#/media/...)
- Bayart 4y agoI wish current design rules followed what's in the memo : the car must be cheap, easy to maintain, easy to understand, the parts expected to wear must be as durable as possible. I quote : « Quality must be impeccable - yet it must affordable ».
- canbus 4y agoScariest (and most exciting!) automotive experience I've ever had was in a 2CV, being thrown around the west german hill passes in one of those things felt like a near-death experience every corner...
- foxbee 4y agoNow i want to drive along a winding road in sunny mainland France eating a beautiful Jambon-Beurre. They should make a lovely, pastel, electric version of this. I bet it would be a hit!
- alex_duf 4y agoWith today's regulations the car would have to look fundamentally different, so your best bet is to make the conversion yourself, or pay someone to do it!
- voqv 4y agoWith so many e-bikes popping up, with extra cargo space and even seating for 2 people (electric rickshaw bikes), I wonder if we can go full circle and bring back old cars like 2cv or Model-T with significant speed limits of 30kmph and reduced safety requirements. More and more european cities are starting to have 30kmph speed limits. To people already preparing to explain how ridiculous that idea is, I know :) It's more of a pipe dream. Just physically makes no sense to carry around 60kg of an ultra lightweight car (estimate taken from lightest Shell eco-marathon prototypes) instead of the 40kg of the heaviest ebikes. Not sure if there's any feasibility wiggle room.
- frozencell 4y agoIs there some similar illustrated website for recent, modern Citroen cars?