The Citroën DS 19: Why It’s the Ultimate Classic Car
The Citroën DS is technically unsurpassed, completely inimitable, has a great back story and is the most beautiful car of all time, writes Dan Neil
WHY HAVE I commandeered your attention with this strange and irresistible object? It is obviously not a car. It cannot possibly be real. Does it even have wheels? Is it a submarine?
Sixty years after its introduction at the Paris Auto Show, the futuristic, perfectly Gallic Citroën DS 19 (D series from 1955-75) retains the ability to wow, an atom bomb of style from a time when atom bombs were kind of cool. The DS was the most technically gifted automobile of its time and the most quintessentially modern, in that it scorned all that was familiar in prewar design—big, exposed wheels, low roofs, strong shoulders and commanding chrome grilles—in favor of something utterly new, at least outside the realm of pulp science fiction.
And yet until two weeks ago I had never actually driven a DS. Now, thanks to the Lane Motor Museum in Nashville, Tenn., which let me take theirs out of the barn, I must have one. That is a problem because I have neither the time, money nor garage space to devote to a temperamental French car that looks like a glass escargot.
And yet, yes, I can feel it. I’m taking la plongée. And if I can own only One Classic Car—I’m pretty sure that would be my wife Tina’s position—the OCC would have to be the Citroën DS. It’s the ultimate desert-island car, the default choice, the go-to. Anyway, this is my journey to oui.
The DS is not just any old car, as is obvious should you park one next to a ’55 Chevy Bel Air, which then appears to have been built by cave-dwellers. The DS was a front-mid-engine, front-wheel-drive car with rear wheels closer together than at the front, allowing its sleek, tapering bobtail. The rears are enclosed in prim fender spats and, above, the remarkable panoramic greenhouse and fiberglass roof, canted like a beret. Did we mention it was French?
The DS (pronounced DAY-ess, a pun on the French word for “goddess”) was a blaze of unorthodoxy and prescient human-factors design: The distinctive one-spoke steering wheel; the trendsetting multidirectional air vents, directed by little wands with plastic knobs; the turn signals located in chrome nacelles fixed to the roof for better visibility.
Sculptor and designer Flaminio Bertoni and aviation engineer Andre Lefebvre had been working on the design at Citroën even before World War II, but the DS was a pure product of the moment. While many cars evoked aeronautic forms—the Rocket Age wonderments of GM or Ghia-bodied Chryslers—the DS is the only car that ever looked like it could fly.
The soul of the DS is in its hovercraft-like stance, attainable thanks to the hydro-pneumatic self-leveling independent suspension, designed by Paul Mages. Basically it’s a French low rider. This complex suspension of hydraulics and pressurized nitrogen, held in the car’s distinctive spherical accumulators, was also what gave the DS its uncanny, gliding ride.
The DS’s high-pressure plumbing could also raise the car’s body to traverse poor roads, high enough even that owners could change a tire without using a jack. Charles de Gaulle credited the DS’s unique suspension with helping him escape a 1962 assassination attempt even after the Citroën’s tires were shot out.
The intellectual elite fell in love. It was included in the Milan Triennale in 1959.
The French structuralist Roland Barthes wrote that it was “obvious” the DS had “fallen from the sky.” But you couldn’t call it avant-garde because nobody, not even Citroën, followed in the DS’s conceptual path. Even though Citroën built and sold about 1.5 million of the cars, the DS remains a kind of a one-and-done, design-wise. In a 2009 poll of top automotive designers, Classic & Sports Car magazine declared the DS “The Most Beautiful Car of All Time.”
Add all that up: technically unsurpassed, completely inimitable, great back story, most beautiful of all time. I’ve only got one wish, remember?
And, if I act fast, I can still afford one. A nicely patina’ed DS21 can be had for less than $30,000. I’d like the covered headlamps with the swiveling, road-following headlamps (illegal in the U.S. at the time) and the rare optional air-conditioning but could live without. The point is, the right OCC could be a nice windfall for my heirs. And that’s how you combine financial planning with obscure French automobiles.
Downsides are few and minor. Corrosion. Plastic interior rot. Would-be dancers at the Folies de Citroën must master the car’s finicky hydropneumatics, which also operate the clutch, gear selector, steering and inboard mounted front disc brakes. The critical rubber diaphragms degrade. Parts are apparently hard to get. There is also the not-insignificant fact of my total ignorance of all of these matters. I would have to learn as I go.
But I don’t want a maintenance-free classic car, do I? That would be insane. Why do I have all these wrenches and stuff?
The Lane’s impeccable, French blue 1959 ID 19 was built as a price-sensitive variant of the luxury DS, with simplified mechanical systems and a little less glorious dashboard and innards. It’s still amazing. When we meet, the ID is settled, sunk into its parking place, a glassine turret, a pillbox Moderne. It’s lost none of its levitating improbability over the decades. The ample driver’s door pivots easily on clever hinges and I sit on the sofa-like front seat, upholstered in electric-blue jacquard fabric. The car settles slightly with my weight before the load-leveling suspension magically distributes itself to return to an even keel. The DS cabin is a wraparound of tall windows, a petit-bourgeois fishbowl of a pampered goldfish.
Bertoni’s single-spoke steering wheel, ribbed in smooth white plastic, feels marvelous in hand. After locating the key lock in the console, I pull on a bit of choke, give it a touch of throttle and push the Start button. A fairly underwhelming engine noise shudders up the frame, then a fine, chiming putt-putt through the car’s strawlike dual tail pipes slung under the bottom.
I slot the column gearshift to first and the big Citroën embarks on a strange, oily sea. The little four-banger doesn’t have much, about 70 hp, but it gives willingly. The rack and pinion steering is firm and reasonably keen for a vintage car. The Citroën’s body rolls with nautical dignity, well damped, while floating above the busily pumping wheels. Obviously, the DS was designed to conquer the vast straight-aheads and is less composed with a lot of steering dialed in. But once at highway speeds, the Citroën rolls out the magic carpet. The seats are royal, the ride sublime. Few modern cars, maybe none, are as splendidly comfortable as the DS.
The epicene, un-fast Citroën might strike some as too precious, somehow too on the nose for a professional car critic. It’s a very turtleneck-and-Brittany Spaniel kind of choice. Still, it’s nothing like the cry-for-help of a vintage Ferrari.
Can’t wait to introduce the family to Madame Right.