If you make a list of the most noteworthy, technically innovative, and memorable cars of the 20th Century, many of them have one thing in common: the twin-chevron emblem of Automobiles Citroën SA. Founded by an inveterate gambler, Citroën developed a reputation for bold engineering that beggared almost every other automaker in the world, building cars that were decades ahead of their time. Let's look at the first great Citroën, the car known in France as "La Reine de la Route" (queen of the road): the legendary Traction Avant.

THE FOUNDER

André Citroën was born in Paris on February 5, 1878, the youngest son of a Dutch diamond merchant and his Polish wife. Although he won admittance to the prestigious École Polytechnique, Citroën graduated with undistinguished marks, and went into the French army as an engineering officer. He left the service in 1904 to begin manufacturing double-helical gears for industrial use, based on a "herringbone" gear whose patent rights he had obtained. Within a year, he had built the gear-manufacturing venture into a successful business.

In 1908, Citroën was recruited by the automakers Emile and Louis Mors to sort out their ailing business. Citroën was not particularly interested in automobiles, but he was by that point one of France's leading experts in mass production. By 1913, he had thoroughly revamped the Mors operation, quintupling production. He returned to his own business, which he shortly took public, becoming Le Société des Engrenages A. Citroën.

Citroën had big ideas about the possibilities of mass production, inspired by the American industrialist Henry Ford, who became his greatest hero. (The Jewish Citroën was apparently either unaware of or undaunted by Ford's notorious antisemitism.) Citroën had met Ford and toured his Highland Park factory in Michigan in 1912, which greatly informed his thinking on factory design and production techniques. He finally got the opportunity to fully exercise those ideas during World War I, when he set up a huge, modern factory on the Quai de Javel in Paris to manufacture artillery shells. His efforts were hugely successful, churning out more than 35,000 rounds a day.

Even before the armistice, Citroën knew that he munitions business would fade rapidly when the war ended, leaving him with a highly modern factory and nothing to produce. In search of a fresh business direction, he turned his attention back to the automobile. The factory on the Quai de Javel became the center of his new operation, Automobiles Citroën SA, which launched its first car, the Type A, in May 1919.

Designed by Citroën's former colleague from the Army Technical Service, Jules Salomon, the Type A was a simple, robust little car, capable of a reasonable 40 mph (64 kph). The Type A was a commercial success, as were its successors, the Type B and Type C. They were unremarkable designs, but they found a receptive audience, thanks to their basic soundness, bargain prices, and Citroën's tireless and imaginative promotional efforts. Citroën was a masterful promoter; he paid to put his name in lights on the side of the Eiffel Tower in the 1920s, and he set up a toy factory to produce miniature versions of his cars, selling them at a loss just to make sure every French child knew the name Citroën.

Unlike Henry Ford or Walter P. Chrysler, Citroën was not an automotive engineer; he entrusted the design of his cars to his employees. Like Ford, he was fascinated with the mechanics of mass production -- how to make things faster, cheaper, and more efficiently -- but unlike Ford, he had little intrinsic fascination with the cars themselves. He wasn't an enthusiastic driver, and speed and performance never inspired him. That he chose automobiles as the focus of his postwar business was because he saw a ready market, particularly for inexpensive people's cars in the mode of Ford's Model T. The early Citroëns were certainly not as crude as the Model T, but they were born of a similar mindset.

THE PERENNIAL

So, how did a maker of unpretentious, proletarian transportation end up producing one of his era's most innovative cars? Curiously enough, the radical Traction Avant was a direct result of Citroën's obsession with cost-effective production. Like Ford, Citroën was a strong believer in refining an existing product, rather than continually reinventing the wheel with a succession of new models. Not only is it cheaper to keep polishing an extant design, it allows production to be streamlined, improving quality and lowering manufacturing costs. The problem with keeping an existing product around for many years, as both Ford and Citroën had already discovered, is that its popularity often falls off as buyers gravitate towards newer rivals. Citroën decided that the best way around that dilemma was to design a car that would be so advanced that it could be maintained for years with only evolutionary changes.


With an overall height of 59.5 inches (1.5 meters), the Traction Avant was one of the lowest cars in the world in its day. It's more than 8 inches (20 cm)  lower than the early-thirties Fords that it otherwise resembles, and it's no taller than a Chevrolet of twenty years later. Despite that, it is quite room: the unitary construction means that there are no conventional frame rails, allowing the floor to be placed lower without sacrificing headroom. Note the lack of running boards, very unusual at the time; their deletion allowed the body to be stretched wider, improving interior room.

Citroën was not a conservative man. Many of his contemporaries in the auto industry were hidebound in their thinking; senior Chrysler engineer Fred Zeder, for example, declared flatly that Chrysler would build a front-wheel-drive car only over his dead body, while Henry Ford's stubbornly resisted advances like hydraulic brakes. Citroën had few such prejudices, and his relative ignorance of automobile design made him blithely indifferent to conventional notions of what was and was not feasible. Moreover, he was a lifelong gambler. He had an almost implacable faith in his own instincts, and he was always willing to take big risks if he thought there would be a big payoff.

THE GAMBLE

By the early 1930s, Citroën was in dire need of a big success. His company was by then the world's fourth-largest automaker, but the Depression had hurt the auto business very badly. Citroën hadn't helped matters with his devil-may-care attitude towards money. He would visit a factory and hand out watches to all the employees, even when he was broke, and he won and lost fortunes at casinos across Europe. It was not reassuring to his many creditors, nor was his haphazard attitude towards paying his bills. Citroën had made a deal with the Michelin family for a 10% discount on the wholesale cost of tires if his annual volume was more than 80,000 a year. When sales fell short of that cut-off, he decided to withhold payment completely, hoping that he could pay the entire amount after sales improved enough to meet the discount threshold. It was a typical Citroën strategy, giving him enough capital to keep going, but leaving him ever deeper in debt.

In 1932, Citroën hired André Lefèbvre and Maurice Sainturat from Renault, and assigned them to develop his new model. His performance goals were modest; he specified a top speed of 62 mph (100 kph) and fuel economy of 23.5 mpg (10 liters/100 km), neither of which was particularly exceptional. The specifications he wanted, however, were something else entirely. Citroën called for all-steel construction -- at time when most contemporaries still used wood/steel composite bodies -- with a welded, unitized structure, rather than a conventional separate body and frame. The new car was to have front-wheel drive and, even more ambitiously, automatic transmission, radical stuff for the early 1930s.


The Traction's body is a monocoque shell, but the engine, transmission, and front suspension are carried on a bolt-on subframe. In theory, the entire assembly can be unbolted and wheeled away, like a wheelbarrow, for repairs and maintenance, although it was not quite that easy. (Thirty years later, General Motors would use a similar approach for the Oldsmobile Toronado and Chevrolet Camaro/Pontiac Firebird.) This Light 15, like all post-1936 Tractions, has rack-and-pinion steering, like most modern cars. The steering is very quick (only two turns lock-to-lock), but quite heavy, and it makes for a turning radius that's more like a Cadillac than a compact car.

The official story is that the new car was conceived solely by André Citroën and then developed in only 18 months by Lefèbvre and Sainturat, but the design was certainly not created in a vacuum. In December 1931, Citroën had visited the Philadelphia headquarters of the Budd Company, which designed the dies for Citroën's bodies. While there, he saw a prototype created by Budd's brilliant engineers Joseph Ledwinka and William Muller of a front-wheel-drive (FWD) car with an all-steel, integrated body and an aluminum V8 engine. Citroën had previously expressed curiosity about unitized construction and FWD, and while his new car was not directly based on the Ledwinka/Muller design, it seems likely that it was inspired by it. André Lefèbvre also had previous experience with front-wheel drive; before joining Citroën, he had designed an abortive front-drive prototype for Voisin.

Despite those precedents, Lefèbvre and Sainturat had their work cut out for them translating these advanced concepts for mass production, particularly in such a short time. One major feature, Citroën's desired automatic transmission turned out to be beyond the state of the art. The early prototypes  had what we would now call a continuously variable transmission (CVT), designed by Dimitri Sensaud de Levaud. It worked to a point, but it overheated easily in any but the gentlest driving. To Citroën's considerable embarrassment, it actually fell apart before the startled eyes of a group of potential investors. Lefèbvre hastily designed a more conventional three-speed manual gearbox, using the same case as the failed automatic.

Even with a conventional transmission, the new car was a remarkable achievement. Its dimensions and mechanical specifications are closer to a 1980s Honda Civic than anything of its own era. Styled by Flamino Bertini and bearing a striking resemblance to the 1934 Ford, it remains a low-slung and rakish-looking car, as much as a foot (30 cm) lower than its contemporaries. Thanks to its unitary construction, it was far roomier than its exterior dimensions suggested; the absence of conventional frame rails and bulky driveshaft left more of the interior volume available for passenger space. The low center of gravity, combined with compact torsion bar springs and independent front suspension, gave it a smooth ride and extremely agile handling. Its cornering ability was marred slightly by 'snatchiness' from the front axles and an unwieldy turning radius, but the front-drive Citroën was genuinely nimble, an adjective not easily applied to most prewar cars.

Speed was not the new Citroën's forte. It had a four-cylinder engine of 1,302 cc displacement (80 cubic inches), which made a modest 32 hp (24 kW). Top speed met Citroën's original specification of 100 km/hour, but only just -- the British magazine The Motor recorded a top speed of 61 mph (98 kph) and reaching that speed took patience. Admittedly, there were still few roads in the world that allowed sustained speeds over 50 mph (81 kph), but many of the Citroën's competitors could outrun it, at least in a straight line.

SEVEN AND ELEVEN

The initial version of the new car was called the 7, based on its fiscal horsepower rating, 7CV. Since Citroën had previously offered 7CV cars, the company appended "Traction Avant" (Front Drive) to distinguish the new 7 from previous Propulsion Arrière (rear-drive) Citroëns. Although "Traction Avant" was never the model's formal name, it quickly stuck, and all models were commonly known simply as "Tractions."

SIDEBAR: Fiscal Horsepower Ratings

France, like many European countries, used to class and tax automobiles based on their fiscal (or taxable) horsepower rating. Taxable horsepower is usually calculated based on engine displacement, rather than actual, developed horsepower.

In France before the war, the formula for calculating fiscal horsepower -- known as cheval vapeur ("steam horsepower") and abbreviated "CV" -- was the engine's displacement in liters multiplied by 5.714, rounded to the nearest whole number. For example, a 1.5 L (92 cu. in.) engine would be rated 9CV (1.5 x 5.714 = 8.71, rounded up). Great Britain used the Royal Automobile Club (RAC) formula for taxable horsepower, which was the square of the cylinder bore in inches times the number of cylinders, divided by 2.5. For example, a six-cylinder engine with a cylinder bore of 3.5 inches (89 mm) would have a taxable horsepower rating of 29.4.

Until the 1950s, automakers often used a car's taxable horsepower rating as its model name. For instance, Citroën's immortal 2CV ("Deux Chevaux") originally had a 425 cc (26 cu. in.) engine, whose taxable horsepower rating was 2.43, rounded down to 2CV. Manufacturers didn't always change these names when the engine displacement changed, however; when Citroën enlarged the 2CV's engine to 602 cc (37 cu. in.), its taxable horsepower rating actually rose to 3CV, but Citroën wasn't about to rename such a popular car! 

The differing rating systems sometimes led to identical cars with different taxable horsepower ratings in different countries. For example, Citroën Tractions with the 1.9L engine were called Eleven ("Onze") in France, but "Fifteen" in the UK.

Today, most European countries base vehicle taxes on some combination of engine displacement, actual output, CO₂ output, and emissions class, and the taxable horsepower system is essentially obsolete.

The chrome slashes across the grille are the Citroën emblem, which officially is modeled on the herringbone gears that launched André Citroën's business career. (Since Citroën was a Freemason, some have speculated that it's actually a Masonic symbol.) The emblem at the base of the grille, which covers the front of the transmission, is a stylized phoenix -- an appropriate symbol, given Citroën's hopes that this model would revive his flagging fortunes.


The British version of the 11CV, called "Light 15," came standard with a wood dashboard and leather upholstery, adding a luxury touch -- appropriate, since the Traction definitely wasn't cheap. Naturally, all UK-market cars had right-hand drive. Note the curious shifter, the Citroën chevrons on the pedals, and the highly optimistic 80-mph speedometer.

THE MICHELINS

The Traction proved to be André Citroën's last gamble. Producing such an innovative new model (and working out its many teething problems) was enormously expensive, well beyond the company's available capital. Citroën hoped that sales of the Traction would be enough to repay the development costs and put the company back in the black, but this time, he had overextended himself. By the time the Traction Avant went on sale in March 1934, Citroën was more than 150 million francs (something like $7 million) in debt. On December 21 of that year, he was forced to declare bankruptcy. Under French law, he was required to step down, and Edouard Michelin -- who had become Citroën's largest creditor -- took over management of the company.

Citroën was left a broken man. The accumulated stress had done his health no favors; he'd suffered persistent ulcers for several years, and after his forced retirement, he was diagnosed with stomach cancer. He died on July 3, 1935.

Citroën's departure and death did not mean the end of the Traction, nor of the company. The Michelin family was determined to make the company succeed, in hopes of recouping some of their investment, and they had no apparent aversion to radical ideas. Indeed, Pierre Boulanger, the man Edouard Michelin assigned to run Citroën, proved even bolder than André Citroën himself. A few of André's wilder projects were axed following the Michelin takeover, but for the most part, the development and refinement of the Traction continued apace.


This Light 15 ("Onze Légère" in France) is 168 in (4,267 mm) long, a little shorter than a modern compact, but it has a vast, 114.5-inch (2,908-mm) wheelbase. Tthe wheelbase of the Normale is even bigger, at 121.5 in (3,086 mm), and the Familiale and Commerciale are a whopping 129 in (3,277 mm), about the same wheelbase as a sixties Cadillac. The  principal reason for the long wheelbase is that the transmission and driveshafts are in front of the longitudinally mounted engine, like front-drive Cords of the same era. Most modern FWD compacts have their engines mounted transversely, with the transaxle next to the engine, rather than ahead of or behind it, allowing the nose to be shorter at the expense of a wider engine bay.

EVOLUTION

Like the later Volkswagen Beetle or Porsche 356, the Traction evolved through a series of running changes. Early Berlines and Faux Cabriolets had a moleskin faux-leather roof insert, which eventually was replaced by a full steel roof. Outside access to the trunk was added, and new, long-wheelbase versions (the big Normale and even bigger, nine-passenger Familiale) joined the original Légère models. The early car's friction shock absorbers were replaced with more effective hydraulic shocks, and rack-and-pinion steering -- another novelty -- appeared in mid-1936, further sharpening the already excellent handling.

The original 1.3-liter engine was replaced within a matter of months by a bigger, 1.6-liter (100 cu. in.) version, with 36 horsepower (27 kW) instead of 32 (24 kW). (Technically, the new engine made the Traction a 9CV, but Citroën had invested too much in publicizing the "7" to want to change the name.) In 1935, Citroën also offered an even bigger, 1.9-liter (117 cu. in.) four, with 46 horsepower (34 kW); it was known as the "11" (Onze), from its 11CV fiscal horsepower rating. A six-cylinder "15" appeared in 1938, offering 77 horsepower (57 kW) from 2.8 L (175 cu. in.). The six-cylinder cars, known as "15s" in France, were the fastest Tractions, but they were very heavy, which made the already stiff steering even more difficult. The Onze was the best compromise, and remained the most popular choice through most of the Traction's existence.

Production was interrupted by the outbreak of war and the German occupation, although Citroën engineers continued to work secretly on new model ideas. Before the war, Tractions were popular with both police departments and gangsters for their maneuverability, and during the occupation, many Tractions were commandeered by both the Nazi occupation forces and the Resistance. Quite a few Tractions had highly eventful careers, although such adventures meant that the survival rate of prewar cars is rather low.


The Light 15, known as "Onze Légère" in France, had a 1,911 cc (117 cu. in.) overhead valve four, initially rated at 46 horsepower (34 kW). It was enough to push this 2,350-lb (1,065-kg) car to a top speed of perhaps 70 mph (113 kph), with 62 mph (100 kph) taking around half a minute. Citroën once tried to develop a V8 engine by joining two "Onze" fours with a common crankcase, but it never got past the prototype stage. The 1.9L engine would prove to be long-lived; a much-refined version powered the Traction's successor, the DS, and served well into the 1960s.

Peacetime production resumed in late 1946, albeit with a much-restricted range of models and colors. The Traction continued to evolve well into the 1950s, and it remained in production until July 1957. In all, more than three quarters of a million were built, an impressive total for an unusual (and expensive) car.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Citroën's subsequent cars were no less daring or innovative than the Traction. The 2CV, launched in 1948, was a deceptively simple, cunningly engineered people's car whose rustic looks belied the sophistication of its basic design. The DS, introduced in 1955, was a technological tour de force that still looks futuristic today, as does the later SM coupe. The 1970s GS, designed around a dual-rotor Wankel engine, was equally ambitious, although the failure of its rotary engine made it an expensive disaster for the company.

The cost of those ventures, combined with the first oil crisis and Citroën's ignominious withdrawal from the North American markets, eventually pushed the company back into receivership in 1974. The French government called for a merger of Citroën and Peugeot into a single entity, PSA Peugeot Citroën, which was completed by the summer of 1976. Unlike Michelin, which had supported the company's engineering and styling innovations, Peugeot put the brakes on Citroën's ambitions, pushing for cheaper, more mundane models. By the 1980s, many Citroëns were little more than warmed-over Peugeots.

To modern eyes, the attractive but archaic styling dates the Traction Avant, but it remains a car ahead of its time. As Citroën himself intended, it took many years for other manufacturers to catch up with the Traction, and if its specifications no longer seem unusual, it should be remembered that few other automakers offered any of those features until more than thirty years later. Ever the gambler, André Citroën played the long shot, and it ultimately paid off, even if he didn't live to see it.

SIDEBAR: Our Photo Car

If you look closely, you may notice that this 1939 Traction is a right-hand-drive car. This is a Slough-built Light 15 Saloon, one of 538 built in 1938 for export throughout the British Empire. The Light 15 had a base price of £248 (around $1,250), and came standard with a chrome grille, leather upholstery, and wood trim on the dashboard; this car has the optional sliding steel sunroof. This particular car was originally sold in Wellington, New Zealand in April 1939. It was commandeered that December by the Royal New Zealand Air Force, and served as a staff car throughout the war. Its present owners are Chuck Forward and Tina Van Curen, the owners of AutoBooks in Burbank, California, whose logo currently adorns the doors.

Located at 3524 W. Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank, just east of Hollywood Way, AutoBooks specializes in automotive books, repair manuals, scale models, and memorabilia. (Your author has spent many an afternoon there, looking for new reference materials.) If you're in the Los Angeles area, stop by and check it out. (Note: Ate Up With Motor has no relationship with AutoBooks, and received no payment or gifts in kind for this endorsement.)

NOTES ON SOURCES

Our principal source for the background of André Citroën was David Owen's "Gear Maker, Arms Maker, Car Maker: The Legacy of André Citroën," from the Spring 1975 issue of Automobile Quarterly (Vol. 13, No. 2), which is reprinted at http://www.citroen.mb.ca/Legacy/index.html#anchor263930 (accessed 1 August 2008). The history of the Traction Avant came primarily from Julian Marsh's splendid Citroën website (Julian Marsh, date unknown, Citroënët, http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/ac/traction/traction-avant.html, accessed 30 July 2008) and from Michael Lamm's "Two Look-Alikes: Ford & Citroen" in Special Interest Autos #9 (January-March 1972), reprinted in Terry Ehrich, ed., The Hemmings Motor News Book of Postwar Fords (Hemmings Motor News Collector-Car Books) (Bennington, VT: Hemmings Motor News, 2000). Additional details came from Niels Heilberg's "Citroën Faces" (date unknown, http://www.geocities.com/MadisonAvenue/4430/bluebook.html, accessed 1 August 2008) and Wiljan Cats' Citroën page, (date unknown, Cats-Citroën, http://www.cats-citroen.net/home.html, accessed 30 July 2008).

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Comments (4)

• 2009-05-27 07:21:35 | woofer  - 1950 Traction Avant

  A pal of mine restored a 50 model. He drove us about 60 mi round trip one night. This little car was never meant to be driven at American highway speeds and the noise level was incredible. The gearshift sticking straight out of the dash looked menacing. An interesting car but not really meant for American driving.

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• 2009-05-27 13:33:38 | Administrator

  Definitely not, although in fairness, at the time the Traction was designed, I don't think there were many places in France or England where you could sustain speeds much above 50 mph for long, rendering its high-speed capabilities a bit moot for many owners!

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• 2010-02-22 19:51:03 | gnb  - Traction article

  Very good article but Mr. Citroen could not have toured Ford's Rouge factory in 1912 as construction of that plant did not start until 1917.

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• 2010-02-22 20:03:03 | Administrator

  Ahah, thank you for catching that! You're absolutely right, and I've amended the text.

  This error actually appears in several published sources, including André Citroën's entry on the European Automotive Hall of Fame website. Citroën DID visit Henry Ford in Michigan in 1912 and again in 1923, but the 1912 visit was to the Model T Automobile Plant in Highland Park, not the Rouge -- as you point out, construction on the Rouge didn't begin until 1917, and it wasn't finished until 1928.

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