October 1948. Citroën 2CV, the French Model T, prepares for its public debut, with Kaiser-Frazer sign about to be hoisted in the background. I test drove one of these in the early seventies, from a sleepy Citroën garage on Cleveland's West Side. Actually, I rode in the passenger seat, since the vendor alone knew how to change gears by pushing, pulling and twisting the knob on the end of the long rod sticking through a hole in the firewall. Sailing over humped railroad crossings on torsion bars was like swinging in a rubber band hammock, the unfamiliar clatter of the flat-twin bouncing off all the bare metal and glass. Stepping back into an Austin America for the drive home was like stepping from the Austin into my mom's Buick.
42ème Paris Salon de L'Automobile, Grand Palais, Parc des Exhibition, October 1955. French makes are concentrated just past Wolseley and Cadillac, along the axis of the main entrance indicated by the arch on the right.
Unveiling of the atom age Citroën DS, another collaboration between Italian industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni and French aeronautical engineer André Lefèbvre, creators of the revolutionary monocoque Traction Avant some 23 years earlier. As philosopher Roland Barthes wrote in tribute, I think that cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: I mean the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a whole population which appropriates them as a purely magical object... It is obvious that the new Citroën has fallen from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object.
Renault 4CV. Development began in secret during the German occupation. Following Hitler's defeat, Ferdinand Porsche was brought to France as part of a war reparations effort to move the Volkswagen project there. Which facilitated several government-ordered consultations with Renault's development team to offer tips on the handling and weight distribution of his competitor's postwar rear-engine design. Here, one sensible old-timer and his wife window shop as crowds swarm the chic new Dauphine a few feet away.
Lancia Aurelia B24S Spider by Pininfarina. Lancia never had much of a presence in the United States. The average American was not interested in spending big money for a small, modestly powered, exquisitely engineered jewel when he could get tonnage and brute force for less. The prospect of global searches for parts and service when something went wrong was likely another deterrent for the level headed. But Lancia's stateside status turned when a pockmarked B24S beater, pulled out of a Northern California garage after a forty-nine year nap, fetched $803,000 at a 2013 Gooding auction in Scottsdale. Gooding has another more presentable example on tap for 2014, carrying a seven-figure estimate this time around. Prière ne pas toucher, indeed.
Chrysler Special Corsair II. Hemi V8 power in a Nardi chassis with body by Carrozzeria Boano of Turin, who built the Lincoln Indianapolis that same year.
Salmson 2300 Sport LeMans Cabriolet by Motto of Turin, perhaps the prettiest Salmson, unfortunately the last. High sticker price in a struggling economy conspired with a punitive French motor tax rate on its 2.3 liter DOHC 4 to doom the car from the start. Only 227 2300s were sold between 1953 and 1956, when Salmson left the automobile business for good, selling its Billancourt plant to neighbor Renault.
