70 years of the Citroën DS

Breaking the mould

At the 1955 Paris motor show, Citroën revealed a car so innovative that the rest of the automotive industry never really caught up with it.

The name DS, when pronounced in French, sounds exactly the same as déesse, which means ‘goddess’, and seems perhaps even more appropriate today than it did when it was coined seven decades ago.

Cars as daring as this one often disappear quickly after selling in very small numbers for a short period, but the Citroën DS remained on the market for 20 years, though it was updated several times.

Here is its story.

The shock of the new

Co-designed by Flaminio Bertone and André Lefebvre, the Citroën DS looked like no car built before or since.

Like the preceding Traction Avant launched in 1934, it had front-wheel drive, but there was no visual resemblance between the two models, since the DS had a fabulously aerodynamic body and, in the interests of further persuading the surrounding air not to impede progress, partially enclosed rear wheels.

In order to pass on important information to following drivers, the DS also had high-level rear indicator lights, a feature which did not become common in the motoring world until decades later.

A philosopher writes

In a famous and floridly written essay published in the collection Mythologies in 1957, French philosopher Roland Barthes described the Citroën DS in glowing terms.

It seemed, Barthes said, to have ‘fallen from the sky’, and he went on to claim that the DS ‘appears at first sight as a superlative object’, with a dashboard that ‘looks more like the working surface of a modern kitchen than the control room of a factory’, and signified – in a phrase which also sums up contemporary reports of the car’s on-road behaviour – ‘a kind of control exercised over motion rather than performance’.

Extravagantly, Barthes wrote: ‘It is possible that the Déesse marks a change in the mythology of cars’.

Though since no other manufacturer followed Citroën’s lead, it might in fact be said that the mythology of cars remained pretty much as it was.

Hydropneumatic suspension

The Citroën DS quickly became famous for its astonishing ride and fine handling, and that was all down to Paul Magès.

Magès, of whom it has been suggested that he might not have been able to do this if he had undertaken more conventional engineering training, invented a hydropneumatic suspension system which Citroën first tried out on a prototype 2CV, and then fitted to the rear of the Traction Avant shortly before production of that car came to an end.

Right from the start, it was used on all four wheels of the DS, and every car with that badge had it, though (as we’ll see) it was omitted from another, otherwise very similar model, with a different name.

More hydraulics

The hydropneumatic suspension was by no means the only surprising feature of the DS.

Hydraulic assistance was also provided for the gearchange, the clutch, the brakes and the steering.

On a slightly different note, Citroën also fitted front disc brakes.

These were by no means new, but they were extremely unusual on a mass-production car, and were mounted inboard next to the transmission rather than anywhere near the wheels.

The first engine

Although the DS looks as if it might be powered by a straight-six engine, or perhaps a V8, it was in fact only ever sold with four-cylinder units.

A flat-six, initially cooled by water and later, like the 2CV, by air, was developed, but Citroën abandoned it and decided instead to go for a reworked version of the 1911cc, in-line, four-cylinder engine instead used in some variants of the Traction Avant.

As first seen in the DS, this produced 75bhp, but the output was raised to 83bhp in 1961.

The earliest DS models were officially known as DS19, the number being an approximation of the engine’s capacity in decilitres.

The ID

Due to its complexity, the DS was rather expensive, and in order to retain customers who would not be able to afford it Citroën had to keep the Traction Avant in production until 1957 as a cheaper alternative.

That matter was resolved by devising the ID (pronounced in French like idée, meaning ‘idea’), which looked almost exactly the same as the DS but differed from it in several ways.

The hydropneumatic suspension was retained, but there was no hydraulic assistance at first for the brakes, clutch, gearchange or steering, though power-assisted brakes and steering became options in 1961 and 1962 respectively, and were later supplied as standard.

The same 1911cc engine was used, though in the early days it was less powerful in the ID than in the DS, often producing less than 70bhp.

The estate

An estate version of the Citroën DS, known variously as the Safari, Break or Wagon depending on where it was sold, appeared in 1958.

Inevitably less elegant than the saloon, it was equally inevitably more practical, with enough room inside for eight seats mounted in three rows in the case of the Familiale version.

The estate was also used as the basis for ambulances and hearses.

The British Broadcasting Corporation famously used a Citroën DS estate for many years in its television coverage of horse racing, the combination of interior space and the car’s celebrated smooth ride being ideal for this purpose.

Rallying

The Citroën DS began to develop a reputation as a remarkably effective competition car in 1959, when Paul Coltelloni and P Alexandre won the Rallye Monte-Carlo.

Other excellent results followed: Pauli Toivonen and Kallio Jaakko won the Thousand Lakes Rally in Finland in 1962, while Bob Neyret and Jacques Terramorsi won the Rallye du Maroc in both 1969 and 1970, with other DS crews being second, third, fifth and sixth of the seven finishers on the former occasion.

Lucien Bianchi and Jean-Claude Ogier were leading the 1968 London to Sydney Marathon in their DS with only 100 miles of the 7000-mile route still to go, but retired when they were involved in a crash with a non-competing car.

As if to make up for that disappointment, Andre Welinski and Ken Tubman won a later marathon, the 1974 London-Sahara-Munich, by a devastating 28 hours.

La Croisette

In 1958, French coachbuilder Henri Chapron built a cabriolet version of the DS called La Croisette.

In its original form, the car had standard rear wings, separated from a panel where the back doors would normally be by a vertical chrome strip.

Later versions, such as the one pictured here, had longer, specially made wings which did not need that strip and made the car look significantly more elegant than it had before.

A fixed-head derivative of La Croisette with a wraparound rear window was known as Le Paris, but only nine were built, nearly all of them in 1959.

The convertible

Citroën had nothing to do with La Croisette, but the car attracted so much public attention that the company gave Chapron the go-ahead to build a series of usine décapotables, or ‘factory convertibles’, which would be sold through the normal dealer network.

These first appeared in 1960 and were still finding customers in the following decade even though they were very expensive, especially if fitted with the optional hardtop.

A usine décapotable featured in the 1962 Doris Day/Cary Grant romantic comedy film, That Touch of Mink, having reportedly been personally ordered from Citroën by Grant.

Le Concorde and others

Henri Chapron came up with a quite different rear-wing design for three models sold throughout the 1960s.

The shape first appeared on the Le Concorde two-door saloon, and in 1963 it was carried over to a pair of less practical but more glamorous two-seaters.

Le Caddy (pictured) was a drophead, while Le Dandy was essentially the same car except that it had a fixed aluminium roof.

The Reactor

The Citroën DS was the basis of an extraordinary show car which was built in 1964 and first appeared in public at the Connecticut Autorama the following year.

Best known as The Reactor, it was designed by Ben Delphia and constructed by Gene Winfield, who used the chassis, hydropneumatic suspension and gearbox of the DS.

The engine, however, was a turbocharged flat-six normally used in high-performance variants of the Chevrolet Corvair – a suitable replacement for Citroën’s in-line, four-cylinder motor, which would not have fitted under the very low bonnet.

The Reactor featured in several TV shows of the 1960s, including Bewitched and Star Trek.

Later engines

The original Citroën DS engine was replaced in 1965 by one with a larger bore and a smaller stroke.

The combined effect of these changes was to raise the capacity to either 1985cc or 2175cc, depending on the exact bore measurement, and the power output to, in most cases, more than 100bhp.

In its final form, as introduced in 1973, the engine measured 2347cc, and was capable of producing 141bhp in its most powerful version.

More Chapron cars

After La Croisette – which, you’ll remember, led to the production usine décapotable – and the other models mentioned previously, Henri Chapron developed several more variations on the Citroën DS theme.

In 1965, he revealed the Majesty (pictured here in 1969 form), a particularly luxurious version with a significantly restyled rear end.

In all, 27 examples were built until 1970, the year Chapron introduced its replacement, the Lorraine.
 

The Rallye Monte-Carlo incident

In addition to the rallying success mentioned earlier, the Citroën DS achieved – or was granted – victory in what might be the most controversial event in the history of the sport.

The 1966 Rallye Monte-Carlo was dominated by Mini Coopers, but these and several other cars (all, perhaps coincidentally or perhaps not, made by British manufacturers) were excluded after the finish for having illegal headlights.

Pauli Toivonen (pictured) and Ensio Mikkander, on board the most successful of the DS21s in the event, were therefore promoted from fifth to first, leading to a scandal which was hardly their, or Citroën’s, fault, and arguably gave the Minis more favourable publicity than they received even in the events they actually won.

Claims made in the heat of the moment that this would be the end of the Rallye Monte-Carlo proved to be false, since the event is still being run nearly six decades later.

The famous headlights

Citroën slightly altered the appearance of the DS in 1962, but this was a small matter compared with the changes made by Robert Opron five years later.

From late 1967 until its discontinuation, the DS had four headlights arranged in two pairs, each pair sitting behind a transparent panel.

In yet another example of the innovation for which Citroën had become famous, the inner pair swivelled when the steering wheel was turned, so their beams followed the line the car was taking through corners.

The new arrangement was illegal in the United States, so in that market the DS was sold with four uncovered, non-swivelling headlights.

The SM

Citroën’s new flagship model of 1970 was not the same as the DS, but it’s part of the DS story.

Major differences included the SM’s new body, power steering whose assistance varied according to the speed of the car and a 2.7-litre (later 3-litre) V6 engine supplied by Maserati, which was under Citroën ownership at the time.

The SM did, however, have both the hydropneumatic suspension and the inboard front disc brakes used in the DS.

Citroën built some Maserati-powered DS prototypes, and similar cars were used in rallies, but no such model ever went into production.

End of production

The Citroën DS might, as Barthes wrote, appear to have fallen from the sky, but it took a long time to hit the ground.

Production continued all the way through to 1975, and although there had been several changes the car was still very similar to the way it had been two decades earlier – something which could be said of very few other models built in the same period.

The generally accepted number of examples built is 1,455,746, and while most of these were assembled, naturally enough, in France, some were made elsewhere, including in Citroën’s UK factory in Slough.

The replacement

The Citroën DS eventually gave way to the CX, which was around for nearly as long, from 1974 to 1991.

Taken in its own right, the CX was a remarkable car, unlike almost anything on the market.

At the same time, though, it did not have the shock value of the DS, being an evolution of previous ideas (the hydropneumatic suspension, for example, was by now very familiar) rather than creating a revolution of its own.

Car of the century

After three years of selection and voting, the Car of the century award winners were announced in late December 1999.

Few people were surprised that the Ford Model T had taken the top spot, or that the Mini had placed second.

However, the Citroën DS, which was built in significantly smaller numbers than either of the above, received the third-highest number of votes, placing it ahead of both the Volkswagen Beetle and the Porsche 911.

The most beautiful car

Then 10 years after the Car of the century awards, this magazine, Classic & Sports Car, asked 20 leading car designers to name the three cars they considered to be the most beautiful in the world.

The Citroën DS received the most votes, beating the Jaguar XK120 and the Ferrari 275GTB, and leaving the Jaguar E-type trailing well behind in seventh.

Giorgetto Giugiaro described the Citroën as “just impossible to imitate”, while Leonardo Fioravanti called it “a real road car that, at its time and perhaps still now, has represented the ‘dream’ in its extreme progress”.

“A few people may have thought of all those beautiful ideas,” added Marcello Gandini, “but it was real bravery to implement all of them in one car.”

DS returns

The DS name was brought back in 2010 for the DS3, a premium supermini based on the Citroën C3.

Five years later, this and other models became part of a new marque called DS Automobiles, which is marketed separately from Citroën.

None of the modern DS models has ever caused as much astonishment on its introduction as the original did back in 1955, but perhaps no other car ever will.