On Display

The international motoring press ridiculed the Citroën 2CV when it first appeared at the 1948 Paris Salon. The French public disagreed and orders for the ingenious, mechanically simple and, above all, cheap utility car flooded in. The 2CV remained fundamentally unchanged for four decades. Over 3.8 million had been built by the time production ended in 1990. There were also 3 million 2CV based derivatives such as vans, the Bijou and the Dyane.

In the 1930s Citroën’s managing director Maurice Boulanger instigated a design for a ‘toute petite voiture’ (very small car) that could carry two people, 50kg of potatoes and a box of eggs at 60kph over the worst roads in France. Prototypes were produced before the Second World War. Innovative features of the 2CV included inboard mounted front brakes, interconnected mechanical self-levelling suspension and easily detachable body panels.

A vehicle with almost every virtue except speed, silence and good looks

The Motor, 30 December 1953