Citroën
Citroën is a French automobile company. The "Automobiles Citroën" manufacturing company was founded on 4 June 1919 by André Citroën. Citroën has been owned by Stellantis since 2021 and previously was part of the PSA Group after Peugeot acquired 89.95% share in 1976. Citroën's head office is located in the Stellantis Poissy Plant in Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine since 2021 and its offices studies and research in Vélizy-Villacoublay, Poissy, Carrières-sous-Poissy and Sochaux-Montbéliard.
In 1934, the firm established its reputation for innovative technology with the Traction Avant. This was the world's first car to be mass-produced with front-wheel drive and four-wheel independent suspension, as well as unibody construction, omitting a separate chassis, and instead using the body of the car itself as its main load-bearing structure.
In 1954, Citroën produced the world's first hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension system; then the revolutionary DS, the first mass-produced car with modern disc brakes, in 1955. In 1967, swiveling headlights that allowed for greater visibility on winding roads were introduced in several models. These cars have received various national and international awards, including three European Car of the Year awards.
History
André Citroën graduated from the École Polytechnique in 1900 and visited his mother's homeland, Poland, shortly after she died. During that holiday, he saw a carpenter working on a set of gears with a fishbone structure that were less noisy and more efficient. Citroën bought the patent for very little money, leading to the invention of double helical gears. The next year, he and his partners invested a significant portion of his inheritance in founding "Citroën, Hinstin et Cie," a gear manufacturing business specializing in V-shaped helical gears, starting with about ten workers.Citroën had a successful six-year stint working with Mors between 1908 and the outbreak of World War I. He built armaments for France during the war, but he realized that unless he planned ahead, he would have a modern factory without a product afterward.
Early years
Citroën began planning to switch to automobile manufacturing by 1916, when he asked the engineer Louis Dufresne, previously with Mors rival Panhard, to design a technically sophisticated 18-horsepower automobile he could produce in his factory once peace returned. Long before that happened, however, he had modified his vision and decided, like Henry Ford, that the best post-war opportunities in auto-making would involve a lighter car of good quality, but made in sufficient quantities to be priced enticingly. In February 1917, Citroën contacted the 1909 creator of Le Zèbre, French automotive engineer, with a mandate that was characteristically both demanding and simple: produce an all-new design for a 10-horsepower car that would be better equipped, more robust, and less costly to produce than any rival product at the time.The result was the Citroën Type A, announced to the press in March 1919, just four months after the guns fell silent. The first production Type A emerged from the factory—located at Quai de Javel, Vaugirard, Paris—at the end of May 1919, and in June it was exhibited at a showroom at Number 42, on the Champs-Élysées in Paris which normally sold Alda cars. Citroën persuaded the owner of the Alda business, Fernand Charron, to lend him the showroom, which is still in use today. This C42 showroom is where the company organises exhibitions and shows its vehicles and concept cars. A few years later, Charron would be persuaded to become a major investor in the Citroën business. On 7 July 1919, the first customer took delivery of a new 10HP Type A. In the same year, it produced 30 cars daily, totaling 2,810 vehicles, with 12,244 produced in 1920.
That same year, André Citroën briefly negotiated with General Motors a proposed sale of the Citroën company. The deal nearly closed, but General Motors ultimately decided that its management and capital would be too overstretched by the takeover, thus, Citroën remained independent until 1935.
Between 1921 and 1937, Citroën produced half-track vehicles for off-road and military uses, using the Kégresse track system. In the 1920s, the U.S. Army purchased several Citroën-Kégresse vehicles for evaluation followed by a licence to produce them. This resulted in the United States Army Ordnance Department building a prototype in 1939. In December 1942, it went into production with the M2 Half Track Car and M3 Half-track versions. The U.S. eventually produced more than 41,000 vehicles in over 70 versions between 1940 and 1944. After their 1940 occupation of France, the Nazis captured many of the Citroën half-track vehicles and armored them for their own use.
Citroën used the Eiffel Tower as the world's largest advertising sign, as recorded in Guinness World Records. He also sponsored expeditions in Asia, North America and Africa, demonstrating the potential for motor vehicles equipped with the Kégresse track system to cross inhospitable regions. These expeditions conveyed scientists and journalists.
Demonstrating extraordinary toughness, a 1923 Citroën that had already travelled was the first car to be driven around Australia. The car, a 1923 Citroën 5CV Type C Torpedo, was driven by Neville Westwood from Perth, Western Australia, on a round trip from August to December 1925. This vehicle is now fully restored and in the collection of the National Museum of Australia.
In 1924, Citroën began a business relationship with the American engineer Edward G. Budd. From 1899, Budd had worked to develop stainless steel bodies for railroad cars, for Pullman in particular. Budd went on to manufacture steel bodies for many automakers, Dodge being his first big auto client. At the Paris Motor Show in October 1924, Citroën introduced the Citroën B10, the first all-steel body in Europe. These automobiles were initially successful in the marketplace, but soon competitors who were still using a wooden structure for their vehicles, introduced new body designs. Citroën, who did not redesign the bodies of his cars, still sold in large quantities nonetheless, the cars' low price being the main selling point, which factor however caused Citroën to experience heavy losses.
In 1927, the bank Lazard helped Citroën by bringing new much-needed funds, as well as by renegotiating its debt—for example, by buying out the Société de Vente des Automobiles Citroën. It went even further by entering in its capital and being represented on the board; the three directors sent by Lazard were Raymond Philippe, Andre Meyer and Paul Frantzen. André Citroën perceived the need to differentiate his product, to avoid the low price competition surrounding his conventional rear drive models in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In 1933 he introduced the Rosalie, the first commercially available passenger car with a diesel engine, developed with Harry Ricardo.
Traction Avant and Michelin ownership
Traction Avant
The Traction Avant is a car that pioneered the mass production of three revolutionary features that are still in use today: a unitary body with no separate frame, four wheel independent suspension and front-wheel drive. Whereas for many decades, the vast majority of motor cars were similar in conception to the Ford Model T – a body bolted onto a ladder frame which held all the mechanical elements of the car, a solid rear axle that rigidly connected the rear wheels and rear wheel drive. The Model T school of automobile engineering proved popular because it was considered cheap to build, although it did pose dynamic defects as automobiles were becoming more capable, and resulted in heavier cars, which is why today cars are more like the Traction Avant than the Model T under the skin.In 1934 Citroën commissioned the American Budd Company to create a prototype, which evolved into the 7 fiscal horsepower, Traction Avant.
Achieving quick development of the Traction Avant, tearing down and rebuilding the factory and the extensive marketing efforts, were investments that resulted too costly for Citroën to do all at once, causing the financial ruin of the company. In December 1934, despite the assistance of the Michelin company, Citroën filed for bankruptcy. Within the month, Michelin, already the car manufacturer's largest creditor, became its principal shareholder. However, the technologically advanced Traction Avant had met with market acceptance, and the basic philosophy of cutting-edge technology used as a differentiator, continued until the late 1990s. Pierre Michelin became the chairman of Citroën early in 1935. Pierre-Jules Boulanger, his deputy, became the vice-president and chief of the engineering and design departments. In 1935, the founder André Citroën died from stomach cancer.
Research breakthroughs
had been a First World War air reconnaissance photography specialist with the French Air Force; he was capable and efficient and finished the war with the rank of captain. He was also courageous, having been decorated with the Military Cross and the Legion of Honour. He started working for Michelin in 1918, reporting directly to Édouard Michelin, co-director and founder of the business. Boulanger joined the Michelin board in 1922 and became president of Citroën in January 1938 after the death in a road accident of his friend Pierre Michelin remaining in this position until his own death in 1950. In 1938, he also had become Michelin's joint managing director.During the German occupation of France in World War II Boulanger refused to meet Dr. Ferdinand Porsche or communicate with the German authorities except through intermediaries. He organized a "go slow" on production of trucks for the Wehrmacht, many of which were sabotaged at the factory by putting the notch on the oil dipstick in the wrong place, which resulted in engine seizure. In 1944 when the Gestapo headquarters in Paris was sacked by the French Resistance, his name was prominent on a Nazi blacklist of the most important enemies of the Reich, to be arrested in the event of an allied invasion of France.
Citroën researchers, including Paul Magès, continued their work in secret, against the express orders of the Germans, and developed the concepts that were later brought to market in three remarkable vehicles – a small car, a delivery van and a large, swift family car. These were widely regarded by contemporary journalists as avant garde, even radical, solutions to automotive design.
Thus began a decades-long period of unusual brand loyalty, normally seen in the automobile industry only in niche brands, like Porsche and Ferrari.