Citroen DSCoordinates 47.3242975,1.0117373
Picture dated March 2011
The Citroen DS was intoduced at the Paris Motor Show of 1955 as a replacement for the Traction Avant of 1934. In the first 15 minutes of the show, 743 orders were taken, and orders for the first day totalled 12,000.
The car featured a novel hydropneumatic suspension including an automatic leveling system and variable ground clearance, developed in-house by Paul Magès and tested on the Traction Avant 15H of 1954. This suspension allowed the DS to travel quickly on the poor road surfaces common in France – and also allows the car to be driven on only 3 wheels in an emergency! In addition, the vehicle had power steering and a semi-automatic transmission, and a fibreglass roof which lowered the centre of gravity and so reduced weight transfer. Inboard front brakes (as well as independent suspension) reduced unsprung weight. Different front and rear track widths and tyre sizes reduced the unequal tyre loading, which is well known to promote understeer, typical of front-engined and front-wheel drive cars.
Italian sculptor and industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni and the French aeronautical engineer André Lefèbvre styled and engineered the car. Sedan, wagon/estate (known in some markets as the “Safari”) and convertible bodies were available, and custom bodies were made by coachworks such as Chapron. Because the styling of these cars was so radical for the time, the DS was available for almost 3 years alongside the car it was designed to replace.
The DS was successful in motorsports like rallying, where sustained speeds on poor surfaces are paramount, and won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1959. In the 1000 Lakes Rally, Pauli Toivonen drove a DS19 to victory in 1962. In 1966, the DS won the Monte Carlo Rally again, with some controversy as the competitive BMC Mini-Cooper team was disqualified due to rule infractions. Ironically, Mini was involved with DS competition again two years later, when a drunk driver in a Mini in Sydney Australia crashed into the DS that was leading the 1968 London–Sydney Marathon, 98 miles from the finish line. The DS was still competitive in the grueling 1974 London-Sahara-Munich World Cup Rally, where it won over 70 other cars, only 5 of which even completed the entire event.
Citroën sold 1,455,746 cars, including 1,330,755 built at the manufacturer's original mass-production plant in Paris at the Quai André-Citroën.
President Charles de Gaulle survived an assassination attempt at Le Petit-Clamart near Paris on August 22, 1962, planned by Algerian War veteran Jean-Marie Bastien-Thiry. The car was peppered with bullets, and the shots had punctured the tyres, but the car could still escape at full speed. This event was accurately recreated in the 1973 film The Day of the Jackal. The car also appears in “The Goddess of 1967” in 2000; “Pas de problème!” in 1975; “Cold Fever” in 1995; “Back to the Future Part II” in 1989; and a convertible by Chapron in “le Mariage du Siècle”, 1985. The car also appears in the 2009 TV show “the Mentalist”
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