Citroën 2CV6 1975
New-in-Box, stored
away for 20 years
1:43 Scale;
Color: Orange exterior
with brown, leather-colored interior.
Note the fine details
including windshield wipers, rear view mirrors, amber front turn signals, red taillights,
chrome fuel cap and door handles, Citroën badging, canvas sunroof, and front
& rear license plates with characters.
Purchased in Paris, France, at Citroen's iconic flagship showroom at no. 42 Avenue des Champs-Elysées where André Citroën exhibited his first car in 1919.
About the Citroën 2CV6
The Citroën 2CV (French: deux chevaux, literally means "two horses", meaning "two taxable horsepower") was an economy car produced by the French company Citroën from 1948 to 1990. Introduced at the 1948 Paris Mondial de l'Automobile, it has an air-cooled engine mounted in the front and driving the front wheels.
Conceived by Citroën Vice-President Pierre Boulanger to help motorize the large number of farmers still using horses and carts in 1930s France, the 2CV was a combination of innovative engineering and straightforward, utilitarian bodywork. The 2CV featured overall low cost of ownership, simplicity of maintenance, an easily serviced air-cooled engine (first model had 9 horsepower), and minimal fuel consumption. In addition, it had literally been designed to cross a freshly plowed field with a basket of eggs on the passenger's seat without breaking them, because of the lack of paved roads in France at the time; with a long-travel suspension connecting front and rear wheels, giving a soft ride for vehicles of that era.
Often called "an umbrella on wheels", the fixed-profile convertible bodywork featured a full-width, canvas, roll-back sunroof, which accommodated oversized loads.
Between 1948 and 1990, more than 3.8 million 2CVs were produced, making it the world's first front-wheel drive car to become a million seller after Citroën's own Traction Avant. The 2CV platform spawned many variants known collectively as the A-Series, including 2CV-based delivery vans (known as Fourgonnettes), the Ami, the Dyane, the Acadiane, and the Mehari. In total, Citroën manufactured more than 9 million of the 2CVs and derivative models.
A 1953 technical review in Autocar described "the extraordinary ingenuity of this design, which is undoubtedly the most original since the Model T Ford". In 2011, The Globe and Mail called it a "car like no other". The motoring writer L. J. K. Setright described the 2CV as "the most intelligent application of minimalism ever to succeed as a car", and a car of "remorseless rationality."
Both the design and the history of the 2CV mirror the Volkswagen Beetle in several ways. Conceived in the 1930s to make motorcars affordable to regular people for the first time in their respective countries, both went into large scale production in the late 1940s, featuring air-cooled boxer engines at the same end as their driven axle, omitting a length-wise drive shaft, riding on exactly the same wheelbase (94.5 inches), and using a platform chassis to facilitate the production of derivative models. Just like the Beetle, the 2CV became both a million-plus seller and one of the few cars in history to continue a single generation in production for more than four decades.
In July 1975, a base model called the 2CV Spécial was introduced with the 435-cc engine. To keep the price as low as possible, Citroën removed the third side window, the ashtray and much of the trim from the car, and remaining trim was simplified, including simple vinyl-clad door cards and exposed door catches rather than the plastic molded trims found on the 2CV Club. After the 1978 Paris Motor Show, the Spécial regained third side windows.
Citroën 2CV6 in
Popular Culture
Perhaps the most unlikely of all James Bond’s cars was a Citroen 2CV that Roger Moore borrows from a nearby young woman after his Lotus Esprit explodes in “For Your Eyes Only (1981).” Despite rolling over at one point, the car emerges relatively unscathed from a surprisingly effective car chase also involving two Peugeot 504s.
As Inspector Clouseau, Peter Sellers drives a 2CV van in “The Return of The Pink Panther (1975)”. Its brakes fail completely, and it crashes into a swimming pool.