Flaminio Bertoni

ANDRÉ CITROËN, never easy-going, had an especially short fuse in Spring 1932. A giant of mass-production techniques, Citroën was going all-out to disrupt the family car market with his all-new range, then called Project V and later promoted as the Traction Avant. Work on its radical front-wheel-drive powertrain and monocoque structure was progressing well. But the fierce company head had just rejected the third design proposal from his bodywork team.

One senior Citroën engineer had, however, made the canny signing of a 30-year-old