For more than four decades, the little parapluie pour quatre (‘umbrella for four’) soldiered on through an array of models, upgrades, and eye-catching colour schemes, from 1948 right through to 1990.
Quirky, and with a rationality of design that sets it apart from any other, the 2CV endeared itself to generations, achieving almost cult status. The only other car that survived longer in production was Volkswagen’s almost equally quirky Beetle, which was also developed in the 1930s.
TOUTE PETIT VOITURE
In 1934, a bankrupt Citroën, struggling with the lasting effects of the Great War of 1914–’18 and facing the Great Depression, saw as a possible salvation the vast population in rural France still using horses and carts on poor country roads. The company, which had been bought by Michelin, recognised the need for a special kind of car. But this was not founder André-Gustave Citroën’s vision. He succumbed to cancer in 1935.
Famously added to the design brief was the requirement that it should carry a basket of eggs across a ploughed field without whipping up an omelette
The Michelin family, famous for its tyres and its eponymous guide to the best food in France, created to encourage more gastronomes to travel, conducted a survey to determine the best way to get more French people more mobile.
The answer from Citroën vice-president Pierre-Jules Boulanger was the affordable, simple, and rugged umbrella on four wheels that would carry four adults, plus 50kg of farm goods, at 50kph. An ability to handle rough roads, tracks, even fields, would be essential. Famously added to the design brief was the requirement that it should carry a basket of eggs across a ploughed field without whipping up an omelette. Naturally, it also had to be extremely economical.
In 1936, Boulanger assembled
