I had this car as an offbrand-Matchbox car as a kid. I somehow always knew it was French, but I have no idea of the make and model. Can someone fill me in? I believe they were common in the 1960’s-1970s era. (Correct me if I am wrong.) Please enlighten me!
It’s a Citroen DS.
A Citroen DS, perhaps?
Edit: Damn, ninja’d 
Citroen, in a style that continued for about 20 years, in the 60s-70s. I think first introduced in about '55, going from memory.
I am not 100% certain, but looks like a Citroen to me. They sold a lot in Panama while I was growing up there.
A friend of mine owns one - very interesting machine. Self-leveling hydropneumatic suspension, inboard disc brakes, different wheel spacing front vs rear, headlights turn with the steering wheel.
An old saying is “The DS is a vehicle designed by a clever engineer who once had an automobile described to him.”
One trick that can help in searches that relate to pictures or things shown in a picture, is to take the URL of the image (in this case: http://www.blogcdn.com/green.autoblog.com/media/2009/04/citroends.jpg) and plug it into Google Images (after first choosing/clicking the ‘search by image’ icon (the little camera in the corner)).
When you do that for the URL of your picture, here’s what you get. Neat.
ETA: The URL of the picture also contains the name of the car!
Thank you for the tip! Neat, indeed.
Yeah, our French teacher around 1970 had one of these - I think he brought it with him from France. We called a “Citron”. It always looked like it was struggling uphill.
The oddest feature of those was the single-spoke steering wheel, IMHO.
I had a ride in one of these (or maybe a later/different model, but with many of the same features) - when parked, the car sinks down on its suspension and when started, you have to wait a few seconds while it pumps back up - a process which seems to happen alternating between a little at the back and a little at the front. Many people have compared it to the experience of riding a camel as it stands up.
There used to be a Citroen DS near where I lived. A horrible old woman who lived in our village, Mrs Warren, had one. My brother used to mow her lawns.
Anyway, at that time I considered it the ugliest car I had ever seen, and, though I have seen worse since, even now I still dislike it a lot.
I’m sort of surprised at the question on these boards. Giles drove one* on Buffy until Spike wrecked it, and Duncan MacLeod drove one on. Highlander when they shot in France.
*they used a coupe and sedan.
:mad:
You know, I had always heard that “Citroen” was French for “lemon”. Turns out that “citron” is lemon in French.
J.
It is Dutch for “lemon” (presumably from the French), and André Citroën’s father was Dutch.
The obnoxious bully nerd in Real Genius also drove one, and the intrepid team out to save the world drives it onto the military base claiming it’s a rented car…
And lets not forget the far more attractive Citroën Traction Avant 11 that featured so prominently in the French film Diva
Darn. When I saw “French car,” I was hoping it would be this.
I recently visited the High Museum in Atlanta during their Dream Cars exhibition. One of the cars they were featuring was the 1934 Voisin C25 Aerodyne. Pretty easy to see it was penned by the same designer who moved on to Citroen later.
