GERRY BIRRELL – Lost Before His Time

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Aspects of Motoring History # 18

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CITROËN 2CV: DIFFERENT IS EVERYTHING

By Malcolm Bobbitt.

2020 review by Autolycus

This is a small masterpiece.  In a book of modest proportions and affordable price is a comprehensive story of the Deux Chevaux.  Malcolm Bobbitt has an engaging and highly readable style, and his deep knowledge of and love for the 2CV shows in the little details crammed into just 96 pages.  Here are just three: that World War II saved the project because it stopped an unready prototype being foisted upon the French public; that Rolls-Royce’s chief stylist drove one regularly to work and upset the directors at Crewe by parking it next to more patrician machines; that the Slough factory came about partly because of successful testing of a Kegresse half-track under War Office auspices.

All the famous models, and the many changes to them over the years, are properly covered, from the saloon to the Fourgonette, from the twin-engined Sahara to the Dyane, and from the Méhari  to the Ami.  And the story is told of the ill-fated Bijou, its reason for existence and the cause of its demise.  The illustrations are highly informative, many of those from the early years being provided by Citroën themselves.

Anyone who has driven the 2CV or one of its variants must of course have been ever so slightly mad but would also have had a great time – often at many degrees to the vertical – and with absolutely no damage to their spines.  They, and anybody else with even the slightest interest in motoring history, really should buy this book.

Publisher: Amberley Publishing, 2019., www.amberley-books.com

Available from: the publishers

Price: £14.99 plus p & p – but £11.99 for a limited period from April 2020.

Description: Softback (233 x 165 mm), 96 pages; copiously illustrated in colour and black & white.

ISBN: 978-1-4456-8766-7


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