While the multi-billion dollar American car industry continues to concentrate its energy on adding inches to the length, horsepower to the engine, and ornamentation to the body of the American car, a small but well-established French firm, Societe Anonyme André Citroën, has stolen the march by producing a really new car, and one that is creating a quiet sensation among engineers and automobile aficionados.
But to say that a car is new and different is only to say that it is interesting, not necessarily that it is good. To find out what can happen when car designers start with a clean sheet of paper on their drawing boards, and to learn what American buyers can look for in coming years, CU’s consultants bought one of the first Citroën DSI9s to reach America, and subjected it to the same schedule of road tests that they give all cars. Their conclusion, while not one of all-out enthusiasm, suggests that American car designers who are studying the Citroën are on the right track, for many of its unique features couldn’t fail to appeal to American car buyers. The citroen parts are cheap as well!
And to be sure, the Citroën, like most other foreign cars, is designed primarily for the terrain and the driving conditions of its own country, where the cost of fuel is high, and high speeds on the open roads between towns are more important than taxiing around the suburbs and beating other cars at traffic lights. The Citroën uses an engine hopelessly underpowered by American standards to propel a car of modest size and weight. But here modesty ends. For the Citroën has no peer among American cars, regardless of size, weight, or price, in the matter of passenger comfort. How that comfort has been achieved is in large part the story of the new-from-the-ground-up Citroën.
The heart of the Citroën is a pump actuating its central hydraulic system; its veins and arteries are a hundred-odd feet of tubing carrying its life blood (in the form of hydraulic fluid) to an impressive array of organs: including brakes, steering, clutch h, transmission, and suspension.
The Citroën has no axles; each wheel is independently attached to the chassis by swinging arms. The body is supported, not by metal springs, but by an enclosed column of oil and compressed nitrogen, separated by a flexible diaphragm. The result is a comfortable, bounce-free ride judged by CU’s consultants to be better than the best ride available in a conventionally sprung car. In many respects, the ride is quite different. This difference results in part from the superiority of compressed gas over steel as a spring medium. In part it comes from an ingenious shock absorber, and a design which permits the Citroën’s central hydraulic system to adjust the amount of oil in each suspension unit so as to keep the car always on an even keel, and at a constant height, compensating for varying passenger loads and for changes in weight distribution that take place as the car is driven over hilly or uneven roads, or as the brakes are applied.
The height of the car is under the control of the driver, through a simple lever under the dashboard. For the best ride and handling on smooth roads, the car customarily rides low. Come rutted roads or snow drifts, the road clearance of the car can be increased. Changing a tire on the Citroën is almost a pleasure. The driver sets the car’s height to its maximum, inserts a simple prop under the car’s side, and then reduces the suspension level so as to draw up the wheels again. The ailing tire remains suspended in the air. If it’s a rear tire, the loosening of one bolt removes the enshrouding rear fender; removal of a single nut allows removal of the wheel. If it’s a front tire, the fender does not interfere with access.
Body and frame
The Citroën’s excellent rigidity and shake-free characteristics result chiefly from two large (six-inch-deep) box members along the sides of the car, over which entrants step down onto the floor. Body and frame are in a single unit. Since the car has front wheel drive, there is no drive shaft to make a hump along the center line, and the Citroën floor is perfectly flat, covered by carpet with a thick foam rubber underlay.
The Citroën derives its uncluttered, sharp lines partly from body components which are simple and simply joined together. The trunk lid and the long, downsloping hood are of aluminum. The roof is plastic. The windows are frameless, without vent panes. Excellent vision prevails in all directions, for all passengers as well as the driver.
Both the front and rear seats are a comfortable “chair height” – over 15 inches high – and covered with a generous layer of foam rubber. The bucket-type front seats have adjustable backs, so that occupants can recline or even lie flat. Seating dimensions are liberal for two passengers front and back; three on the rear seat is a tight squeeze. The trunk, deep rather than wide, and placed squarely between the rear wheels instead of hanging out astern, achieves a good average interior size because neither the gas tank (under the rear seat), the spare tire (in front of the engine under the hood), nor the rear axle (there isn’t any) encroach upon it. The car’s rear overhang is very short; its front overhang, too, is less than in most US cars. It has a wheelbase five inches longer than a 1957 Ford’s, but is a foot shorter overall. The underside of the Citroën, from the front wheels back, is flat; the wind resistance of the whole car is remarkably low.
Engine and transmission
The most ordinary feature of the Citroën is the engine – a fairly-long-stroke four, with hemispherical combustion chambers, push-rod-operated valves, aluminum cylinder head, and two-barrel carburetor. It has about one-third the piston displacement and horsepower of a 1956 Chrysler, in a car that weighs two-thirds as much – from which its meek-and-mild performance may be deduced, and is confirmed by CU’s performance tests.
One unusual feature of the engine is a simplified ignition system alleged to require extremely infrequent checking or replacement of breaker points – which is just as well, since the “timer” is in an extremely inaccessible location.
The engine, transmission, and differential gears are combined in one unit at the front of the car, the final drive being by universal-jointed shafts to the front wheels. The transmission has four forward speeds, the fourth like an overdrive in ratio. There is no clutch pedal; the gear lever acts as a selector, without effort. The central hydraulic system operates the simple friction clutch.
This gear change system sounds good, but its operation leaves much to be desired. The purpose, of course, is to get rid of the clutch pedal, without going to the high cost, extra weight and power losses of an automatic transmission.
CU’s experience with various engineering attempts to operate a clutch automatically have been uniformly unhappy and the Citroën set-up is no exception. Primarily, the trouble is that the shifts take too long a time to complete themselves. The car loses momentum pitifully during each upshift in ascending hills; it is left hopelessly behind in traffic. CU’s test drivers unanimously agreed that they would like the car much better – which, incidentally, means very well indeed – if it were equipped with a foot -operated clutch and a good, handshifted gearbox.
Steering and brakes
The DS19 has both power steering and power brakes, again via the central hydraulic system. The steering wheel is of small diameter, with only one “spoke.” The “brake pedal” is a button the size of a headlight-beam switch, with about the same amount of travel.
The steering is very quick and very precise, requiring slightly more effort than on most US power-steered cars, but with much less apparent loss of road sense, in part an attribute of an excellent rack-and-pinion (rather than worm and sector) steering gear. The advantages and disadvantages of front-wheel drive in car handling are controversial. It is certainly true that in spite of its having two-thirds of its unladen weight on the front wheels, the Citroën corners and handles beautifully in normal driving, without tire squeal or scrubbing, without tugging at the wheel, nose-heaviness, excessive lean, wheel spin, or other undesirable attributes. How the Citroën will behave on ice, or in snow, CU doesn’t know as yet.
The Citroën brakes are unique – and they, too, are exceptionally well-behaved. The front wheels are equipped with disc brakes mounted not on the wheels, but inboard, on the driveshafts. The rear wheels have conventional drum brakes. Both front and rear brakes are operated by power from the car’s central hydraulic system.
Besides being the first mass production car to use disc brakes – which are normally less susceptible to “fade” than drum brakes – the DS19 braking system has two other interesting features. Since disc brakes have no self-applying force, or “servo” action, even abrupt brake application (which is easy with the rather on-or-off foot-button control of the Citroën) doesn’t pitch the passengers from their seats, or lock the front wheels unnecessarily. Furthermore, the Citroën hydraulic system automatically alters the proportion of braking between front and rear wheels according to the changes in weight distribution caused by deceleration, hills, or passenger loads. Excellent braking behaviour is the net result.
The parking brake is a foot pedal connected mechanically to the front disc brakes, and requiring considerable pressure for application; it is released by pulling a knob.
Summing up
Now what about the drawbacks, both of the elaborate hydraulic system and of the car as a whole? The former has a lot of plumbing, and CU’s test car developed several minor leaks, not all of which were fixed satisfactorily. (Hydraulic brake fluid, by the way, costs two or three dollars a quart.) With total hydraulic failure, the car can still be steered and braked, and towed slowly, but gears and clutch would be inoperative. Major adjusting and servicing of the hydraulic system is a job for trained experts – practically nonexistent in the U. S. at present.
Regarding the rest of the machinery, there is nothing especially temperamental about it, but the complication and inaccessibility under the hood (where almost all of the machinery, plus the spare tire and the front brakes are located) is strictly American style.
The Citroën DS19, over and above its complex and important mechanical features, is a car of interesting, freshly conceived, and often very practical details. For example the heating-ventilating system, with air entering through grilles on the dashboard rather than through pivoted vent window panes, is excellent.
Dash space is economized by locating the clock on the front of the ash tray. Each taillight contains a spare bulb. Interior door handles double naturally as grab handles. And, finally, the ignition key is itself as revolutionary as most of the car – it goes into the lock either side up!
The DS19, though it is in many respects a glimpse of the future, and though it offers practically unmatched passenger comfort, is not a car to rush out and buy, even if you can afford its $3285 price. At its present bug-ironing-out stage of development, and with its only about-to-be-born US service, the Citroën DS19 is essentially a connoisseur’s item.
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