Car enthusiasts will be flocking to Techno-Classica, the world’s biggest classic car show, in Essen, Germany, through till 19 April. This year, CITROËN is exhibiting under the banner “CITROËN’S GOT CHARACTER”, with strong-personality models such as the 2CV 4×4 Sahara, the Ami 6, the GS and the C4 CACTUS Aventure concept car. With their consistent capacity to surprise and delight, CITROËN cars have been making motoring history for more than 95 years.
At this year’s Techno-Classica show, visitors will be discovering or rediscovering some of the emblematic CITROËNS whose style and creativity have forged motoring history and inspired motorists’ imaginations through the ages.
The inimitable 2CV 4X4 Sahara
This four-wheel-drive 2CV made its début appearance in 1958, climbing a 40% slope in the desert. To ensure unfailing duty and well-being in all circumstances, critical subsystems were doubled up: two engines, two gearboxes, two fuel tanks. With its rear-mounted power unit, the car would also be known as the dual-engine 2CV.
The emblematic Ami 6
The Ami 6 was unveiled in April 1961, and would sell close to 1,040,000 units till it was finally discontinued in 1971. With its inimitable design, including the characteristic inverted rear window signed Flaminio Bertoni, this four-door CITROËN would become the middle-class family car par excellence. The car’s distinctive outline, excellent comfort and spacious interior made a lasting mark on CITROËN’s DNA, and on motoring history.
CITROËN GS, and its aerodynamic design
The GS, designed by Robert Opron and unveiled at the Paris Motor Show in 1970, raised eyebrows with its originality and unique signature. As well as setting new standards in comfort, with its hydraulic suspension and quiet-running engine, the GS would also prove to be a source of inspiration for artists, such as Jean-Pierre Lihou, who in the nineteen-seventies would set about exploring the hypothesis that each shape, each object, each image and even each life stemmed from a common force. The idea was expressed with arrows on a GS, using 73 different colours to represent the variations in existing forces. This work met with glowing public appreciation at an exhibition at the CITROËN showroom on the Champs-Elysées in Paris in January 1977.