Roger treated us to his 1966 Citroen deux chevaux (2cv), or deux chevaux-vapeur, when he brought it to last February’s Eurosunday gathering at Sharif’s jewelers, in Folsom. The literal translation for deux chevaux-vapeur means “two steam horses. Roger bought the car about a year ago in San Francisco, from an older gentleman, who is in his ’90’s. Personally, I can’t imagine a 90-something year old driving any make or model car which has a manual transmission in the hills of San Francisco, much less a 1966 Citroen 2cv that boasts a whopping 6.02 cubic inch, 26 HP, 2 cycle engine!
This particular example has 17,000 miles (28,000 km) on the original engine. Roger has only had to do some minor restorations on the car. The car comes equipped with front wheel drive, has a 4-speed transmission, with the shifter being on the dash (see photo), and front disc brakes. The shift pattern was: back on the left for 1st gear, 2nd and 3rd gears were in-line, 4th by turning the lever to the right from 3rd, and reverse was opposite of 1st.
Interestingly, the discs are not on the wheels, but rather on the transmission. The brake “pedal” is actually a button on the floorboard (also depicted in one of these photos). The air cooled engine has a top speed of 60 MPH and enjoys an economical 40-50 MPG. The paint is the original Charleston color.
Roger’s car was originally brought into the United States by three Austrians, who toured all around the U.S. in it. Following that, one of Roger’s friends bought the car and transported it out here to California from Colorado in a U-haul type truck then sold it to the previously mentioned gentleman in San Francisco. As pointed out earlier, when the man got to where he was too advanced in age to drive a stick in the City, he sold it to Roger.
With a nod to the BMW boxer motorcycle engine, the 2cv flat twin minimalist engine was durable and basically considered indestructible. The mantra was, “if it’s not there, it can’t break.” Personally, this is very reminiscent to me of how Muntz went about building the perfect T.V. Muntz took numerous televisions apart, one tube at a time, until the television no longer worked, then put them back together in reverse; thereby discovering which parts were unnecessary and which were needed.
Anyway, back to the 2cv. Being an air cooled car, this meant that there was no radiator, water hose, thermostat, water pump, or fan belt. The generator was driven off of the shaft that powered the fan, on the original models. The 2cv’s engine had no thermostat valve in its oil system, unlike other air cooled cars, such as the VW beetle and the Fiat 500.
Cylinder head gasket failures were a common problem during that era, but Citroen solved that problem by eliminating the gasket altogether. Instead, the cylinder barrels and heads were machined and tapped to fit with a gas-tight seal, eliminating the need for a seal. Also, there were no distributor problems with the 2cv because it had no distributor! Instead, a “wasted spark” ignition was employed, which simply fired both cylinders when they were near the top dead center (TDC), on either the compression or the exhaust stroke. By using this same concept for the crankcase sections, machining eliminated the need for gaskets there.
To reduce cost, the windshield wipers on the original models were powered by a purely mechanical system; a cable connected to the transmission, thereby eliminating a need for gaskets there. As a result of this design, the speed of the wipers was dependent upon the speed of the car. Thus, when the car was at a dead stop/idle, the wipers stopped. There was; however, a knob on the dashboard for the driver’s wiper, so that the wiper could be operated manually while at a stop. By 1962, the wipers were powered by a single speed electric motor.
The folks at Citroen were experts with front-wheel drive, thanks to their pioneering Traction Avant in 1933/1934. This was the first front wheel drive in the world. Michelin introduced and launched its first commercialized radial tire with the 2cv’s introduction, which was held in 1948, at the Paris Mondial de l’Automobile. The 2cv was manufactured by Citroen from 1948-1990. In all, Citroen manufactured almost 9 million 2cvs and variants.
Thank you, Roger for sharing your story with me. Also credit for additional information goes to Wikipedia and https://citroenvie.com
Photos and story by Carol Marcopulos
