KEY POINTS:
Sixty years ago this year, a strange little vehicle appeared at the Paris car show. It looked like an upside-down pram with a corrugated bonnet and a canvas roof.
It had no starter motor and one headlight. Its windscreen wipers were operated by the forward motion of the wheels. Its seats looked like cheap canvas deckchairs. The wheels were as thin as saucepan lids. The car was available in any colour that you wanted, so long as it was dull grey.
Thus was born the Toute Petite Voiture ("really little car"), or Citroen Deux Chevaux, a car that suffered mockery throughout its 42 years of production but has come to be regarded as an automotive icon. To generations of foreign visitors, the "2CV" pottering along a rural road epitomised France just as much as berets, baguettes, yellow cigarettes or farm buildings painted with Martini signs. Sadly all, save the baguettes, are defunct or very scarce.
The 2CV may be scarce but it is not forgotten. The life and times of the Toute Petite Voiture are recalled in an exhibition in Paris. Peugeot, Citroen and 2CV lovers are planning other commemorative events this year.
The 2CV was the mid-1930s brainchild of Pierre-Jules Boulanger, the head of Citroen, who also inspired another Citroen staple, the slope-backed DS saloon of 1955.
Long before the Volkswagen was heard of, Boulanger decided that there was a market for a cheap, easily maintained, basic car to replace the horse and cart on French rural roads, and even on the fields.
His specification was for an "umbrella on wheels", a car that could carry 50kg and four people at up to 60km/h and cross a ploughed field carrying a basket of eggs. Since the seats were removable to allow animals to be carried, that has sometimes been elaborated to: "A car capable of driving across a ploughed field with a sheep in the back and a pile of eggs on the front seat, without breaking the eggs (or the sheep)."
The car that appeared at the 1948 Paris motor show, the 2CV Type A, was an advance on the original. It could go up to 80km/h and had an air-cooled engine that could travel for 100 km/h on a gallon of petrol.
Although the car was immediately mocked by the French motoring press, it was, in several ways, a revolutionary design.
There was independent suspension on each wheel but with front and back wheels linked to give a kind of gentle wave movement if the car hit a bump, of which there were plenty on French roads in 1948. The 2CV also had a light, easily serviceable, almost indestructible, air-cooled engine.
It was based on motorcycle engines and was held in place by just four bolts. The car had, in fact, a capacity of eight chevaux, or eight horsepower. The "deux chevaux" refers to the notional, low, French taxation category into which it was designed to fall.
From its commercial launch in 1949, the car was a triumph - a triumph that even Citroen had not expected. There was a waiting list of between three and five years for a 2CV in the first half of the 1950s.
The cars had three forward gears and then a gear mysteriously marked "S", which was an overdrive. The original Citroen specification demanded three gears and this was the engineers' way of providing a fourth gear without alarming their rural customers.
Efforts were made to expand the 2CV's international horizons beyond Belgium. There was, briefly, a factory making the 2CV in Britain.
From 1967, there was a more modern-looking variant called the Dyane. There were also all-terrain, and souped-up roofless versions and a bright yellow "James Bond" version, linked to a scene in the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, in which Roger Moore makes a getaway in a 2CV.
By the late 1970s, the 2CV became a lifestyle statement, popular with hippies and ecologists. There was once a joke that part of the factory finish of a 2CV was a back-window sticker saying "Nuclear? No thanks".
A dashingly young French Prime Minister, Laurent Fabius (38 when he took office in 1984), established the 2CV as an urban runabout for the chattering classes. He drove to the prime ministerial offices each morning in one of the later, trendy versions of the former rural carrier.
However, 2CV production in France ceased in 1989 and in Portugal in 1990. Car industry historians and 2CV fans claim that Citroen was, by then, embarrassed by its "umbrella on wheels".
The car failed to meet modern expectations of safety or speed, the company said at the time.
The 2CV was also, it is whispered by some industry experts, too tough for its own good. What use to a manufacturer is a little car which can last for 300,000 kilometres without needing significant new parts?
There is now a thriving market, in France and Britain, in 2CV "rebuilds".
In an eco-conscious age, car makers are re-examining the concept of a cheap, economical, basic, reliable, easily maintained car. Peugeot-Citroen is promising a "new Deux CV" for next year and, judging by the images, the Citroen Cactus is a snappy, little economy runabout but not the kind of car that you would carry sheep or eggs in.
- INDEPENDENT
