bhs@siemens.UUCP (12/12/84)
Oh, great line eater in the net, take this line as yours and spare all others There has been interest in the 2CV lately, including why, in fact, it is called the 2CV. The 2CV was designed by the gentlemen at Citroen to be THE ANSWER to transportation problems of the French populace. It was to be roomy, reliable, cheap, useful, and was to offer a reasonably good ride over french country roads, which still today are not of interstate quality all the time. The design was completed in time for the Paris Auto Salon of, I believe, 1939, but a look at the history books will refresh your memory into remembering that media attention was in fact focusing on another show of more dramatic nature east of Paris, whereupon the Salon was cancelled. If my memory serves me correctly, ca. 140 prototypes were built before the war, of which only one survived, along with at least some of the plans. These were bizarre, indeed. As noted in another net article, the car had a feeble engine- an air cooled boxer two cylinder, coupled to a transmission which in turn drove the front wheels. The engine, designed to require as little service as neccessary, did not have niceties like fan belts, or a distributor. In fact, in their drive towards simplicity, the designers were going to build the car with a pull starter, a la Toro, but scrapped the idea when it was found that women broke their finger nails on this feature. Still today, however, the car comes equipped with a hole in the front, into which you are able to insert a crank ( alos used to operate the jack ) in order to crank up the engine, if the electric starter fails. All cars are standard version convertibles, with fixed sides. The windows do not have cranks which can fail, instead, to open front windows, you simply unfasten it, and the bottom half folds out and up, and snaps open. To close, you extend your arm out of the window, reach up to the snap, and after flicking the lever, the window will fall shut. You then merely fasten it shut again. Another time saver- the wheels each only have three bolts. The car only has two springs, one for the rear wheels, and one for the front wheels. Being very compliant, the suspension will literally lower the car by several inches when someone gets into it. For unknown reasons, the car displays the most incredible road holding around, it seems to be impossible to roll one. Rumor has it that Citroen would sponsor special events to see if anybody could roll it, but the only casualties I could foresee would be seasickness- the ride is very spongy, the car leans VERY much in curves. The engine makes sounds which always remind me of cooing doves, intermingled with the sounds of gears gnashing with every shift, and merry rattling of various metal body panels. Pink Panther fans will rmember Mr. le Inspecteur himself driving one straight into a pool, rmember the noises it made? Today's version has somewhere in the mid 20's horsepowers, earlier versions were endowed with (I believe) 14 Hp, because of a smaller engine and poorer gasoline. The torque output also was low, at starts from standing, the engine will almost stall, rattling all the poor body panels. The car can be driven fast by the smart courageous ( the few that exist ). The top speed is somewhere around 60 mph, but since the car really goes around a corner fast, if one does not slow down, one does not have to accelerate again, so average speed stays up. The car is not to be confused with the up- market version, the Diane 6. Why 2CV ( two horses in french )? The french government has a complex tax formula whereby all cars are grouped into some class or the other, these classes are assigned a CV each. The rabbit was to be had, depending on engine and luxury level in classes between 5 and 7 ( I believe ). The owner has to pay a certain number of Francs each year for each CV assigned to his car. The 2CV was, as the name implies, initially assigned into the group with 2 CVs. Oh, in aforementioned Pink Panther film, Sellers is driving the commercial van body version of the car. If my memory serves me correctly, the film For Your Eyes Only feature Mr. Moore driving a Diane as a get away car. Based on a similar chassis is the Mehari, a pseudo jeep with a fiberglass bathtub body built for the colonial north African market, as well as the two Ami 8s , the sedan and the station wagon. The Amis, as well as the Diane and Mehari, have larger engines (still air cooled boxers, however ). Bernard H. Schwab Siemens RTL, Princeton, NJ ..!siemens!bhs
yosh@hou2e.UUCP (M.CHING) (12/13/84)
If any of you remember the song "Autobahn" by a German group named "Kraftwerk", I believe the car you hear start up and drive away is a 2CV........ Dave Bloom Holmdel, NJ
chris@pixutl.UUCP (12/17/84)
I must add one more interesting fact about the 2CV that no one has mentionned
yet: the first models didn't have a winshield wiper motor but used the speedo-
meter to drive them. When the car was idle, the wipers would not run, and they
would operate faster as the car was moving faster. The speedometer was mounted
at the lower left corner of the winshield and was the only piece of instrumen-
tation aboard (there was no gas gauge either, but rather a dip stick...).
Chris
--
Chris Bertin : (617) 657-8720 x2318
Pixel Computer Inc. :
260 Fordham Rd. : {allegra|ihnp4|cbosgd|ima|genrad|amd|harvard}\
Wilmington, Ma 01887 : !wjh12!pixel!pixutl!chrishawk@oliven.UUCP (12/19/84)
>The speedometer was mounted >at the lower left corner of the winshield and was the only piece of instrumen- >tation aboard (there was no gas gauge either, but rather a dip stick...). The fuel gage was a new feature in the '64 volkswagen. No dip stick though. When it started sputtering and coughing, you turned the knob to let the gas from the reserve go. You now had one gallon to get wherever. Even the seventy nine bugs (superbeetle convertables) had "R" instead of "E" at the left end of the fuel gage. rick