Previous | Done | Next 1972 Citroen DS21 This Summer I had the same union-wage job at the Coke distributor that I had the previous year. Again, without a car to sink money into, I was able to save a considerable amount of money. This time I expanded my search to include the Syracuse paper. One day I saw a 1972 Citroen DS21 for sale in my price range. I was familiar with the obscure French car through my father, who was familiar with it through time spent overseas in the service. He told my brothers and me stories of him and my mother borrowing one from a local dealer on occasion before we were born. They knew the dealer, and he'd allow them to take one on occasion for day trips and picnics and whatnot. I talked my father into accompanying me to check it out. We showed up one day and took it for a drive. It was a most bizarre car, but everything seemed to check out and it certainly looked very nice. The acceptability of the model was unquestionably within my rather exclusive tastes. I offered him his asking price of $2500 and drove it home that day. This was a true luxury car. It had big, broad leather seats up front, and soft luxurious seats in back. Being front wheel drive there was no tunnel to accommodate the drive shaft and the floors were perfectly flat from side to side both in the front and the rear. This gave it very much the feel of a limousine in back. The dash board was very European and strange. The controls were a bit of a trip. You turned over the engine not with the key but by pushing the gear shift lever into a particular position somewhere to the left of neutral. I had to read the owner's manual to figure out how to operate the headlights. The steering wheel had a single, slender spoke that came down at about 8:00. afforded an unobstructed view of all instrumentation when the wheel was in almost any position. The body was very distinctive. From an artistic standpoint the lines had a flowing integrity that was very pleasing, but it was so fucking unconventional that many people consider it to be the most ugly car they'd ever seen. To this day I consider it to be the most perfectly beautiful automobile that has ever existed. And despite its odd appearance it was extremely aerodynamic. The smooth angles of the body coupled with complete underpanning gave it the lowest drag coefficient of any four door sedan for years. Mechanically, the Citroen is not an easy car to describe. The engine was only 4 cylinders, but it had reasonable displacement, and with hemispherical combustion chambers it proved to have more than adequate power. I never tried to accelerate quickly, but if I had I doubt it would have been very impressive. The hemi engine did, however, continue to put out good power at high RPMs. There was always lots of power left by the time you got it up to highway speeds. It could cruise comfortably at better than 80mph. That's about where anything conventional ends with this car. It was front wheel drive, but the engine was mounted longitudinally and aft of the transmission. Half-shafts extended out to the front wheels, and although this was an unorthodox configuration it provided for excellent weight distribution. The whole vehicle operated off a master hydraulic system. There was a hydraulic pump located up front with the alternator, and it kept a main accumulator pressurized at all times. Whenever the engine was running, there was high-pressure hydraulic power available. It powered the massive, inboard-mounted front disk brakes and conventional rear drums. The brakes were operated by a mushroom shaped button on the floor rather than a pedal. With the unusually high pressure, the brakes were incredibly sensitive. You would really just place your foot on the button and sort of curl your toes. Any direct pressure would bring the car to a screeching halt. The suspension was the most incredible thing about the car. There were absolutely no springs or torsion bars used to suspend the vehicle. Each wheel had an independently controlled hydraulic "shock" that was powered off the high-pressure system. This meant that the suspension was self leveling, which is to say if you had two fat people in the back seat and a keg in the trunk that the rear end would still ride level rather than sag. This also created what today is called a fully active suspension. The independently controlled shocks would react to the road like a skiers legs react to the irregular surface of the ski slope. It drove like it was anchored to the road. There were a couple of side effects of this unique arrangement. One was that when the engine was left off for any period of time the suspension would settle until it looked as if the car was resting on the ground (as pictured above). But when you started it up and the system built up pressure it would gradually rise up to driving position. It was quite disconcerting to first-time passengers. The other side effect was that the self leveling control mechanisms made it possible to adjust the ride height. There was a lever down near the clutch foot that would do just that. It's possible to get the car up to a decent cruising speed (like 70-80mph) and set the suspension on the lowest setting. The aerodynamic body would just slip along under the wind. But if there was a big bump or a muffler in the road the car could be seriously damaged, so I never attempted this. While the suspension was the most incredible thing about the car, the gear shifting was the most fucked up. The clutch and gear change were also controlled by the master hydraulic system. There was no clutch pedal on the floor. Accelerating the engine would cause the clutch to engage. There was a dainty little lever on the top of the steering column that would effect gear change. By letting up on the gas the clutch would disengage, and moving the lever would cause the gears to change. Stepping on the gas would again engage the clutch. Watching the car's inertia it was clear that it was operating in the manual transmission paradigm, but you could go through the gears without your hands ever leaving the wheel. It was so difficult to adjust to that I had to give my friends instructions before they would be able to drive the car. At least I was confident that no one would be able to steal it, because no thief would be able to figure out how to put it into gear and drive away. Owning this car and driving it every day was out of this world. I've never gotten more comments on any car I've ever owned. No matter how long I drove it I never ceased to marvel at the way it would breeze through hard turns and sail over rough roads like it was floating on air. I brought it with me to college the Fall after I pledged my fraternity, and it was the flagship of many a road trip. One day when returning from Canada we were detained at the border under suspicion that we were smuggling the car into the U.S. Unfortunately when things started going wrong with the car I quickly found myself out of my league. No mechanic in town would touch it (I was lucky to find someone who would inspect it for me). At one point the hydraulics sprung a leak in the back and I was forced to take it off the road. I had to leave it sitting unprotected in my parents' yard. I consider this particular automobile to be the most incredible vehicle of its time, and to this day surpassed only by newer models of the Citroen line. Rarely a day goes by that I don't think of how lucky I was to have owned such a gem. Long ago I vowed that some day I will own another before I die. Previous | Done | Next