A la Mode for the European Road
The classic Citroën 2CV fused French elegance with functional engineering, providing practical transport on the road to post-war recovery…
La Deux Chevaux (1948–1990)
Do you feel the need to drive over a freshly ploughed field with a basket of eggs on the back seat without any breakages? Famously, this was one of the specifications listed in an ambitious design brief for an affordable, adaptable, and easy to maintain car. Also, it had to be suited to rural and urban life, capable of achieving 90 miles to the gallon, with room to carry four adults, wearing their Sunday best hats, plus a 50kg ‘bag of potatoes’… and it should be able to do all this at 30mph… along unpaved country tracks.
When first announced at the 1948 Paris Salon, Citroën had already been developing the model for around a decade. When Michelin bought the company in 1937, they appointed engineer Pierre-Jules Boulanger as vice president. He saw those still relying on horse and carts as an untapped automotive market. So he initiated a project to design a new versatile vehicle that could fulfil the roles of cart, tractor, and affordable first family car. André Lefèbvre, an aviation engineer and designer of racing cars, was put in charge of developing the concept…
