I live in rural France, and there are a surprising amount of these still driving around, some of them restored, but also some that have been driven by the same granny for the last 40 years
There's a few knocking around the village of Wirksworth in Derbyshire, which is somewhat logical as the place is pretty much a hippie artist commune with a few shops and additional housing for the people who work in them... Going by the general state of the exteriors (rotten but generally stickerbombed with evidence of past attendance at dozens of owner group meetups) and interiors (worn but immaculately kept with some evidence of DIY repair/replacement), they've also been in the same hands for decades.
These are too alien for the American viewer. They're pretty much designed to be driven flat out all the time, gear selection determines your speed, gear selection is dictated by road condition (uphill, downhill, corner). They have no mass in the roof so they won't roll over under any circumstance, and if you could, you get one for free, or so the introductionary ad went. Turns out you could roll one if you're a big lad and slam your ass into the center pillar on a sharp right hand turn, so that ad was dropped. I tried to topple one in the 90s with my drunk friend when these were cheap as dirt in Europe. We fell asleep instead.
The best car ever made in the world. I've driven all over the world in them, even off road. In Afghanistan (before the war) 4 wheel drive (Land Rover etc) and 2CV's were the only cars allowed to go up into the mountains in the north, because they were the only cars which could cope with the conditions, and if they couldn't they were so light that all you needed to do was round up a crowd and get them to carry the car to where the track was a little more stable. And it may have only been 609cc, but I had mine up over 90 mph on several occasions (speed measured by a police radar trap, who then let me off as he said no one would believe it if they took me to court). If you took the roof and the doors off (less than five minutes work) it was like riding a motor bike, and all the seats came out (again, in less than five minutes) if you wanted to sit on the side of the road and have a picnic in comfort!! They even made a dual engine four wheel drive version (2CV Safari) which could drive up a 45 degree sand dune. There was a competition on the south coast of England where it competed against Land Rovers and Mercedes 4WD, but they stopped the competition when the other cars could no longer make it up the slope but the CV was still going strong - it was too embarrassing for the other car makers (to be fair, though, the dual engine 2CV was so noisy you couldn't hear anyone speak who was sitting next to you).
Until you mentioned the Safari at the end, I assumed that's the one you meant for Afghanistan. IIRC they literally just took a whole additional drivetrain and installed it at the rear, with extended linkages connected to the throttle, clutch and gearshift up front ... and a "backwards" cam so that the rear engine would produce drive in the same direction without needing a different gearbox or transfer case. Also I believe it showed up in some film (one of the 60s Madeline series?) where a pair of twin nuns had one, but setup with two normally forward-running engines, two sets of controls, rear wheel steering and extra lights so it could be driven (with the normal amount of power) in either direction without turning round. No idea why, but it seemed important for the plot... Anyway the 2WD one working alongside Landies doesn't surprise me too much. If you've got decent ground clearance and a lightweight body, a low end FWD car can actually be a pretty decent offroader. I've experienced such on holidays as a kid... the cheap and -cheerful- nasty SEAT Marbellas my parents would hire classified as such and they worked great for hacking off along dirt tracks or even across trackless country on e.g. Lanzarote to find "secret" beaches ... occasionally leaving actual mini offroaders like the Suzuki Vitara (being driven by people with no clue about how to tackle offroad driving) in their wake. Ditto snowy conditions in the UK. A simple, light car dances across the unmade surface, whilst a heavier one ends up ploughing through and getting stuck instead (which can be illustrated with the "density" of cars in my history vs their propensity for becoming stranded in snowy weather; the lighter ones have always got me through, whilst the heavy ones I've had to abandon and take off on foot instead). And I've found similar to be true of rental scooters myself ... so long as their underbone isn't too low to the ground, you can treat them pretty much like they're scramblers and get away with it, because they're too light to get bogged down or throw you dangerously off course by tramlining into ruts in the path, and the balance of weight between machine and rider means you can fling them around much more like an MTB than a heavier motorbike. (...and my relatively light 125 actually works alright on snow, which was a surprise)
TechPassion A car that's more French than Frenchy - the world French champion from the Parisian District of Little France, from where she manufactures berets which she then only sells to French people beneath the Eiffel Tower.
Did a college report on this car for my history of auto class, and I learned it's arguably the most well designed car of all time. Few cars have ever been so well designed around the intended and even unintended user, regardless of how you feel about the styling. I gained a huge appreciation for it.
here in Argentina are a classic. I just repaired one last week. also, it's one of those cars we study on Industrial Design. It was designed basically having 3 point in view. it had to carry four grown men, with their hats on and with a rack of egg through the mud of the old French farm roads
I never really understood the 2CV growing up, I always thought "Who the hell would want this?" Then I went on a midnight tour of Paris in one, and it ll clicked. It was just so lovely to be in, especially in the old cobbled streets. Though maybe that was the free champagne talking.
I think the complexity of explaining the simplicity of the gear lever design explains the complexity of the simplicity just fine. That gear lever is the maximum French I can think of.
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"that's just a citroën thing" Like the radio being between the seats in some old models...
The best way I've generally heard it described is as an umbrella handle sitting inside a drainpipe. Instead of tilting it in two dimensions, you push/pull and tilt it sideways. The gear pattern in this later model isn't the _maximum_ French, though, as it's been slightly normalised into the equivalent of a 4-speed dog-leg column shift, or a 3-speed with a fourth hastily bolted on, much like a lot of 4-speeds clumsily grew 5th gear "warts" in the late 80s. The original pattern was like a 3 on the tree... then to get to 4th you turned the lever to the right _whilst still in 3rd, THEN_ pushed it forwards. And getting out of 4th into neutral or a lower gear involved going through 3rd first. Which made the infamous "3rd gear unwinding" problem even worse... (somehow they designed it so reverse and third shared internal parts, presumably with the separate selectors clamping inwards around a common gearset, but only had poorly-immobilised single-screw-direction bolts holding them together, specialised for staying tight when driven forwards as the car would see much more 3rd gear action than most of the other gears; but this meant if you drove too much in reverse, it would make the fastenings come undone for both gears... so you were recommended to put it in R, kick it into motion fairly sharply, and immediately drop back into neutral and coast the rest of the way)
Funny thing is, the bodyroll is hugely overstated. A properly rebuilt suspension system is not that bad. I've had the 'pleasure' of driving both examples on the same car, before and after a professional no money spared restoration.
Bodyroll was indeed horrific, but it was supersmooth, going over huge bumps and craters in the road, like they weren't even there. On a teamevent, we took 25 of these out on rough terrain, was like driving a rolls royce
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even better than a rolls Hendrik, because you didn't care about the damage done to the cars, would cost nothing to repair anyway!
The 2CV is a car I drove in Gran Turismo, and that was the first time I've ever been bored playing a GT game... but I'd LOVE to drive this in real life!
I'm a Brit and all Brits mispronounce Citoën as 'Sitrone' and not 'Sit-row-en' as it should be. We also mispronounce Hyundai as 'Hi-un-die' and not 'Hun-day'. Personally I also mispronounce 'So fancy' as 'Sew Fauncy'. Sew very, very fauncy.
I'm french, I'm 32 and it's the first car I drove ( I was 12 years old ). You have to be careful of the windows on bumpy roads, they kind of latch into a little spring in a rubber thingy. There's a plastic grill that clips on the front of the bonnet to reduce cold air from comming in, to help the engine in the winter. You can swap the engine with another citroën, the GS, you can even put an old bmw motorcycle engine in it. The 2 c.v. as mr Regular said, means 2 chevaux vapeur ( steam horses ) but french people call it "deux chevaux" ( two horses ). The suspensions on this car are so soft and long that you pratically can't roll it over. But this lovely little "pot de yaourt" (yogurt tub) or " boîte de sardine " ( tin of sardines ) has an archenemy, the Renault 4L. And if you like the lines of the 2c.v you should check it in the " charleston " paint, bordeaux and black ! Thank you for the review, it brings some memories and it's fun to watch you discorvering cars I know.
Yeah, the Renault 4 GTL is one of the more common cars where i live. Not really a vintage car, it's a "first car" car. And Mr. Regular was so confused with the gear stick and it's not that bad, i've used it in a Renault 4 before.
"pot de yaourt" and "boite de sardine" apply also to all kinds of little city cars, but the 2 C.V have it's own affectionate name : "deuchdeuch" or "deuch" if you're too lazy =) it's a contraction of "deux" and "chevaux" it sound like dutch but without the T !
The R4 was designed by Citroen engineers who had spent the 1950s developing a replacement for the 2CV, but the company was too cash-strapped to bring the ideas to market. Renault was state owned at the time and head-hunted the Citroen designers/engineers to leave Quai de Javal and move to Renault over in Billancourt. They used the knowledge learned at Citroen to develop Renault's first front-wheel-drive car. It became so successful that Renault never designed another RWD car.
The Renault 4 was designed with the same idea (low maintenance, economy, reliability) and has the same shifter, but an I4 water cooled OHV engine with the gearbox AT THE FRONT! They're also a lot of fun.
Sam The Multimedia Man - Tata Nano comes to mind, honorable descendent of 2CV, VW Beetle, etc. An attempt to motorize people in a cheap way. A good idea who crashed head first in a poor but stupidly "posh" society. :-(
9hp was the MK1 2CV (1940's - 1970's) then then upped the power and displacement a bit over the years until the mk2 (1970's-1991) had at best a 602cc engine and 29hp. mk1 has a different grille and no C-pillar windows, the mk2 is the one featured.
My father, a civil engineer, worked in the 1950s and 1960s in East Africa on many construction sites. He had a Land Rover, a Jeep and a 2CV. When he had to solve urgently a problem on a bush site, no asphalt road thank you, but bush tracks full of potholes turning into mud river during the rainy season, and he did not need to carry heavy and enormous tools or heavy spare parts, he favoured his 2CV to spare his back. He used to say that he would get there faster with his 2CV, ... yes even with a 2CV.
the US answer to 'shrodinger's hipster' is a chrysler 300. plenty of people drive it unironically, but it is peak irony if you are driving it ironically
In the 1970s my cousin was a Marine Embassy Guard in the Netherlands. The were forbidden from owning two sorts of vehicles because they were too dangerous. One was any sort of motorcycle . The other was a 2CV.
And something of an homage in "Castle of Cagliostro", which is rather Bond-like in tone throughout, and has both a 2CV and a Fiat 500 involved in a chase...
The early ones actually had a secondary centrifugal clutch which made this entirely possible - the foot pedal was just to make things smoother between gears, and to let you rev it up a bit harder before engaging drive for hill starts. Don't know if it was maintained into later models... probably died off around the same time fourth stopped being an "overdrive" you could only reach via third. Even so, that's not too uncommon a thing to be able to do in manual gearbox cars that lack silly American-style lockouts such as not allowing you to run the starter unless the box is in neutral and/or the clutch is pushed in (though if the switch is on the pedal rather than the transmission you might be able to cheat it) and/or you're pressing the brake. I've had some clutch cable and other related failures before ... as long as you can get it moving on the starter in 1st, or abuse the synchros sufficiently, give it a manual push-off, be careful with your approach to traffic lights etc so you can keep rolling uphill and use gravity to get going on downhills... etc... then you've covered the most troublesome part and can generally get away with clutchless shifts the rest of the time. You just generally have to run at somewhat higher revs (so the engine speed falls sufficiently to allow snicking in an upshift with reasonable rev-matching / well timed rhythmic stick movement), not upshift unless you really need to, and be very careful with downshifting, doing it pretty much straight away if you think there's going to be a need for it further up the road... and leave very long braking distances so you can creep along using the brake to hold an artificially low idle instead of stopping completely. Of course, a lighter car helps, as does an older one, as the transmission parts are likely to be a bit more robust and more heavily built, coming from an age where shaving off grammes wherever possible wasn't so much of a requirement, and small cars happened to be light just because they had smaller bodies, built with flimsier metal, and generally smaller engines with smaller clutches and fewer gears. You can abuse them more without causing damage, and particularly, for those with a 1st gear synchro, you can raise the revs a bit, push the lever against the balking synchro to get the car ever-so-slowly moving, then once it's up to walking pace release stick and throttle and shunt it into a rev-matched first once revs fall to idle. Obviously THAT one only really works on the flat, but the same characteristics make starter-bumping and clumsy attempts at inter-gear revmatching more effective too.
I can state with "experience on the subject" that a clutch was definitely a convenience but not necessarily an obligation. ;-) 30 years VW Beetle, 18 years old guy, GF to visit... Well let's say a small detail, like not having a clutch, wouldn't stop me. LOL 😂 Get into first gear, hit the starter get it going. Change gears ON TIME. I recall traffic lights had to be well negotiated, if not. Stop engine. Repeat first part, no problem. My car started perfectly which was a considerable help. But could make a bunch of runs pretty much wherever needed without a single gear grinding. In fact it's an amazing learning experience. I could negotiate any gearbox, even without synchro.
A Citroën 2CV may be slow but thanks to its suspension it can take corners HARD. It will roll to the point of lifting the inside rear wheel off the road, but it won't roll over. You can totally leave faster cars behind you on roundabouts and such.
My father drove one of these into the ground 30 years ago and it became my joyriding vehicle in the tender age of 10, while he had left it parked and unsold and moved on to a little Peugeot. Not that it was possible to kill its engine, but after a couple of hundred thousand miles, it was hard to resist bolting on a 1,3 liter citroen gsa engine, making about 65 horses, and stiffening things up a bit. On such a thing I learnt driving on dirt roads, pretending to be a rally person. Hard to describe the mindfuck for people seeing a curiously fast 2CV driven by someone who looks like a teenager who's not supposed to drive, well, because he is one. It's also probably the only car in the world where lack of horsepower also turns out to be fun. You either drive like you don't have a care in the world, or you're going through every corner absolutely flat out because momentum is everything and it ends up feeling like a roller coaster, cause however scary the lean angles, it keeps gripping. It's pure fun, fun driving it alone, fun with friends, having pick nicks, having air blow to your face through the vent under the window, opening the top on traffic jams and pretending you're there for the sunlight, traveling in situations in which other cars would have fallen apart, having a full night's sleep in the back as a child, in a 20 hour journey... It defies all notions of how unhealthy loving cars too much might be. It makes it completely justified.
The gears are simple. Imagine a standard 5 speed H pattern, only first gear is actually reverse. So R, 2, 3, 4, 5 is the sequence. Nothing flipped nor inverted
The trabant and the 2cv, both shift surprisingly and amazingly well due to how direct and uncomplicated the gear linkage is (though the transmission design also helps)
YESSSS I was soooo hoping you'd do a classic Citroen!! You have to drive a DS at some point, we need your DS review as much as your pubes needed a double flush.
Easier way to describe the shifter. Twist it left, get into R (forward) and 1 (back), turn it right a bit, it goes 2(forward) and 3(back), turn it right once more and you get 4.
So it's literally pronounced exactly how it's spelled? What kind of French name is that? (Although I think the French technically leave the "n" silent so it's more like "Sit-ro-ehhhhh")
Awe yeah! Deux Chevaux! Much like the Beetle, the 2CV was used as a platform for other models like the Diane (slightly less utilitarian) and the Mehari (slightly more utilitarian).
The 2CV wasn't the only french car to have that kind of shifter the Renault 4 and 6 had it but because the engine is mounted backwards Engine is near the firewall and the transmission is on the front of the engine
I run my 3CV (Argentine version of 2cv6) in a voyage of 3000 km and the 2cv and 3cv has indestructibles engines! , great for drive!! nice comfort car, best heater ever!! direct from engine heat too. reach easy 100 km/h speed , enough for trips, the only problems is when you need to pass another vehicle, dont have reaction, that obligate you to lear fine driving skills, and the other problem is front and side winds, but the car is amazing pice of engineering!
There is a cv that is a hard top with a trunk it was the Chilean version. It looked ridiculous and there are rumors of some with an automatic shifter but I can’t confirm that.
I have confirmed their existence with my own two eyes and that it was a weird automated clutch thing that is extremely unsafe and unreliable. They can easily put the revs past the max of the engine an cause catastrophic failures in the engine.
Way too many opening still shots of the owner of the car makes you wonder if there was a crush going on between Regular and that guy. And plenty of hand touchy touchy at 3:19 doesn't help. Or, most likely, I'm just full of shit.
For his entire almost 3 minute long description of how the shifter works, I sat there enthralled with my lips wrapped around my teeth, wishing I could try it. So cool!
Citroen: when a soapbox racer was too luxurious I edited this because a certain group of people finished their daily fisting to the 5 different tvs all playing Herbie at different times, only to come on TH-cam and argue why a car that I was making a lighthearted joke about, left a sour taste in their mouth, oh boy, I offended the vw bug club, don't get me wrong beetles are awesome, but I'm pretty sure the dudes getting mad at me for joking about beetles are the same people who put eyelashes and car bras on their cars
Beetles in Australia are f u c k i n g t e r r i b l e, my nan had one in the 70s I think it was a 68 model?, it leaked it, it broke down all the time, basically it was a 2014 chevy cruze in 1971, that's where I'm coming from
"Quantum superposition" is a perfect phrase that I don't think either Peter Egan or Paul Frere would have ever thought to use to describe the 2CV. Great vid. I think every U.S. car enthusiast has wondered what this car is like to drive.
Liam Godden the prototypes were hidden from the Germans they still turn up now and again hidden in roofs etc someone found one a couple of years ago. Remember the humble beetle was in production for longer. Almost every country has a car that simply crosses the generations.
Never mind 1983, they were still selling these well into the 90s. They remained popular for their simplicity, robustness, cheap purchase and running costs, and timeless charming style... what killed them off was emissions regs - the engine was essentially unchanged since the 40s but for a bore/stroke job and a few evolutionary refinements, so was an exhaust composition disasterzone (I think it even still demanded leaded or lead-replacement fuel right to the end), and Citroen didn't fancy putting any investment into cleaning it up whatsoever. More profitable to just encourage people to transition to their newer AX/BX and Saxo/Xsara models. (The AX being somewhat of a spiritual successor, as it was also small, cheap, basic, interestingly styled, and very very French; so French that I had to reject one as my own first car because my British feet couldn't fit on the brake pedal thanks to a hackish RHD conversion)
If you can get up to about 35-45mph you're already going about 16x faster than someone walking and 4x faster than a typical cyclist (a regular person on an old style safety bike anyway; 2 to 3x faster than a fit rider on a modern bike), and twice as fast as a horse being pushed moderately hard, which is a considerable improvement over anything the common man could manage before, and a good rival for most everyday affordable motorcycles before Honda came along and demonstrated that you could get good power from a small engine by pumping up the revs (and even then, their C50s and C90s, the world's most popular bikes of all time, occupied a similar speed range). It's probably why a lot of the most iconic early mass-motorisation cars offered about that much speed. You can do a lot with it, that you couldn't do with any previous mode of transport, and even vs motorcycles (optionally with sidecars) you could carry more people and stuff, in better comfort and safety and with better weather protection. Legally speaking at least, most of motoring history in most countries of the world you've never really been able to go much faster than about twice that speed, and even then you need a good quality, preferably expressway or freeway standard road to sustain it instead of being frequently busted back down to 50 or quite a lot less. So your potential improvement _from_ that point, even ignoring how affordable cars didn't start getting engines and aerodynamics (and fuel economy) that allowed you to (mostly-)illegally go faster still until relatively recently, is only about twofold. Compared to the improved average speed the basic model already offers, it's fairly small beer. And, well, if you haven't got somewhere to be in a hurry, and you're not going to get in anyone's way (at least, not that you can't safely and promptly get out of the way of), it's a rather pleasant and relaxing speed to travel at. Very economical as well.
It's nice to see reviews of cars most people would consider "crappy" where they're talked about in context of when and where they were made and given a fair shake. A lot of TH-cam really tries to roast everything, point and laugh, "OMG, it sucks!" And it just gets tiring.
Jean-Louis Stevens To be honest id rather have a French car that breaks down on me all the time than an American car that runs like clockwork. I almost bought a 1985 Peugeot 505 wagon for $25 once!
Michael Yachnis I myself would rather have a German, Japanese or American car because I don't like French cars. I mean there's a reason why the Renault logo looks like a jack stand
Think about this, this car was first design in the late 1930's and 40's and it got a better engine than the chevy chevette and also got a way better and more moderne suspension.
No, it's a Boxer Twin. You need a minimum of two opposed cylinders for a boxer, and essentially that's the "true" form because human boxers only have two fists. Unless you're thinking of a flat four being two guys facing each other and fistbumping... (would a flat six then become a boxer and a half? a hexboxer, with a boxer quad inbetween the two?)
You didnt even mention the suspension or do a full speed whip around a tight bend. Missed the out on the real fun of it completely . But alas an rcr 2cv Reveiw! i wanted this, i got it, now im sticky. Where is the bog roll.
Don't feel pressured to pronounce French cars the way they do in the UK, because they practically intentionally mangle French pronunciation. Peugeot isn't supposed to be pronounced "PeRgot", but because English doesn't do a lot of "eu" sounds, and Jeremy Clarkson will go out of his way to mispronounce foreign words, the British have inserted an "R" sound where there is none, and even though the common American pronunciation of "Poo-got" isn't 100% right either, it's closer. And in Citroen, the emphasis in French is on the last syllable, and it technically has 3 syllables, but in the UK they pronounce it like "Citron", with 2. I LOVE the UK, but just because they pronounce a word one way, doesn't mean it's right.
I don't know anyone who says "PeRgot". As far as I knew, it was "Perzjoh", and if that's still not right then it can't be too far from the truth as it matches with the sounds I was taught in French lessons at school. Similarly "Ceetroen" (whatever difference the accent makes is pretty subtle, and certainly isn't clear when said in an allegedly actual French accent), and "Renno", rather than "Citron"/"Citrown" or "Renolt". The manufacturer's TV adverts drill the correct pronunciation into us quite well. Don't take Top Gear's deliberate silliness as your gospel; if Clarkson is mispronouncing something to get a laugh, _he's mispronouncing something to get a laugh,_ and his domestic audience derive some of the comedy from _knowing_ he's saying it wrong.
The better translation is "two TAX horsepower" because originally hp was a function of displacement and a displacement based tax was written into law in 19-oh-whatever as a proxy for taxing power. As time went on real hp per displacement exceeded the tax hp rating, but the law was never updated.
I have a Citroën Méhari, which is a 2CV with a plastic boxy body. These things are the fastest things you can drive on a dirt road, and it's so much fun to drive !
Gear shift is brilliant and simple. Forward and back. Left and right. Gears grouped by use. First reverse for parking. 2nd and 3rd for normal driving. Overdrive on side.
I live in rural France, and there are a surprising amount of these still driving around, some of them restored, but also some that have been driven by the same granny for the last 40 years
There's a few knocking around the village of Wirksworth in Derbyshire, which is somewhat logical as the place is pretty much a hippie artist commune with a few shops and additional housing for the people who work in them... Going by the general state of the exteriors (rotten but generally stickerbombed with evidence of past attendance at dozens of owner group meetups) and interiors (worn but immaculately kept with some evidence of DIY repair/replacement), they've also been in the same hands for decades.
I see these in South America.
"Don't even think about it going in, it'll feel normal, but the second you look at it feels weird" my gf said something to me similar to that.
Holty na bud that was your father..
,
Bet she didn't say its like a quantum position.
I read that as he was saying it
Is this why couples fucked in the dark? lol
These are too alien for the American viewer. They're pretty much designed to be driven flat out all the time, gear selection determines your speed, gear selection is dictated by road condition (uphill, downhill, corner). They have no mass in the roof so they won't roll over under any circumstance, and if you could, you get one for free, or so the introductionary ad went.
Turns out you could roll one if you're a big lad and slam your ass into the center pillar on a sharp right hand turn, so that ad was dropped. I tried to topple one in the 90s with my drunk friend when these were cheap as dirt in Europe. We fell asleep instead.
omg hydrocortisone cream first, corn starch second
They would be perfect on the Appalachian back roads, but we have to occasionally drive the highways too.
The best car ever made in the world.
I've driven all over the world in them, even off road. In Afghanistan (before the war) 4 wheel drive (Land Rover etc) and 2CV's were the only cars allowed to go up into the mountains in the north, because they were the only cars which could cope with the conditions, and if they couldn't they were so light that all you needed to do was round up a crowd and get them to carry the car to where the track was a little more stable.
And it may have only been 609cc, but I had mine up over 90 mph on several occasions (speed measured by a police radar trap, who then let me off as he said no one would believe it if they took me to court).
If you took the roof and the doors off (less than five minutes work) it was like riding a motor bike, and all the seats came out (again, in less than five minutes) if you wanted to sit on the side of the road and have a picnic in comfort!!
They even made a dual engine four wheel drive version (2CV Safari) which could drive up a 45 degree sand dune. There was a competition on the south coast of England where it competed against Land Rovers and Mercedes 4WD, but they stopped the competition when the other cars could no longer make it up the slope but the CV was still going strong - it was too embarrassing for the other car makers (to be fair, though, the dual engine 2CV was so noisy you couldn't hear anyone speak who was sitting next to you).
Until you mentioned the Safari at the end, I assumed that's the one you meant for Afghanistan. IIRC they literally just took a whole additional drivetrain and installed it at the rear, with extended linkages connected to the throttle, clutch and gearshift up front ... and a "backwards" cam so that the rear engine would produce drive in the same direction without needing a different gearbox or transfer case. Also I believe it showed up in some film (one of the 60s Madeline series?) where a pair of twin nuns had one, but setup with two normally forward-running engines, two sets of controls, rear wheel steering and extra lights so it could be driven (with the normal amount of power) in either direction without turning round. No idea why, but it seemed important for the plot...
Anyway the 2WD one working alongside Landies doesn't surprise me too much. If you've got decent ground clearance and a lightweight body, a low end FWD car can actually be a pretty decent offroader. I've experienced such on holidays as a kid... the cheap and -cheerful- nasty SEAT Marbellas my parents would hire classified as such and they worked great for hacking off along dirt tracks or even across trackless country on e.g. Lanzarote to find "secret" beaches ... occasionally leaving actual mini offroaders like the Suzuki Vitara (being driven by people with no clue about how to tackle offroad driving) in their wake. Ditto snowy conditions in the UK. A simple, light car dances across the unmade surface, whilst a heavier one ends up ploughing through and getting stuck instead (which can be illustrated with the "density" of cars in my history vs their propensity for becoming stranded in snowy weather; the lighter ones have always got me through, whilst the heavy ones I've had to abandon and take off on foot instead).
And I've found similar to be true of rental scooters myself ... so long as their underbone isn't too low to the ground, you can treat them pretty much like they're scramblers and get away with it, because they're too light to get bogged down or throw you dangerously off course by tramlining into ruts in the path, and the balance of weight between machine and rider means you can fling them around much more like an MTB than a heavier motorbike. (...and my relatively light 125 actually works alright on snow, which was a surprise)
if you talk about 2CV Sahara is the most expensive 2CV
a model was sold at 110 000€
90kph maybe, not 90 mph, the engine literally won't rev anywhere near that in top gear. More likely the trap was badly calibrated.
there are also aftermarket 4wd conversions that use the mehari's chassis and more conventional 4wd system
The Citroen 2CV,
A car more French than garlic-flavoured toothpaste
French here, it's frenchier than Napoleon
+DukeNuggets69 or frenchier than a french kiss maybe?
TechPassion A car that's more French than Frenchy - the world French champion from the Parisian District of Little France, from where she manufactures berets which she then only sells to French people beneath the Eiffel Tower.
TechPassion then rinsing with a lovely Bordeaux and dabbing your mouth with croissant.
Tres bon.
You are having one HELL of a time explaining that gear shifter.
Evan today, this is so funny😂
I thought I was having a stroke when I heard that
I learned to drive in a 2cv. 3rd to 4th was tricky I seem to remember. It’s different to any other car I’ve driven..great fun.
Listening to Mr. Regular trying to explain this gear shifter is what I imagine autism feels like.
bout right
made my day bro, made my day...
You... have no idea. Then again... gah.
LOL
He sounds like the out of breath auctioneer from that one car show video.
Did a college report on this car for my history of auto class, and I learned it's arguably the most well designed car of all time. Few cars have ever been so well designed around the intended and even unintended user, regardless of how you feel about the styling. I gained a huge appreciation for it.
I remember this as the car driven by Snoopy in Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown!
Ran on bread, apparently
But yes, that was terrific
Yes!!!
Citroen 2CV, the perfect mix between picnics and wine and casual provincial racism
très bien
Or taking a shower in your favorite cereal but definitely milk spraying ON you instead... yup
The best kind of racism!
As a french , you coudn't be more right
here in Argentina are a classic. I just repaired one last week. also, it's one of those cars we study on Industrial Design. It was designed basically having 3 point in view. it had to carry four grown men, with their hats on and with a rack of egg through the mud of the old French farm roads
WITHOUT breaking a single egg!
Winged Thoughts *four cultivators wearing clogs ands hats...
I never really understood the 2CV growing up, I always thought "Who the hell would want this?"
Then I went on a midnight tour of Paris in one, and it ll clicked. It was just so lovely to be in, especially in the old cobbled streets. Though maybe that was the free champagne talking.
I think the complexity of explaining the simplicity of the gear lever design explains the complexity of the simplicity just fine.
That gear lever is the maximum French I can think of.
"that's just a citroën thing"
Like the radio being between the seats in some old models...
^
The best way I've generally heard it described is as an umbrella handle sitting inside a drainpipe. Instead of tilting it in two dimensions, you push/pull and tilt it sideways.
The gear pattern in this later model isn't the _maximum_ French, though, as it's been slightly normalised into the equivalent of a 4-speed dog-leg column shift, or a 3-speed with a fourth hastily bolted on, much like a lot of 4-speeds clumsily grew 5th gear "warts" in the late 80s.
The original pattern was like a 3 on the tree... then to get to 4th you turned the lever to the right _whilst still in 3rd, THEN_ pushed it forwards. And getting out of 4th into neutral or a lower gear involved going through 3rd first. Which made the infamous "3rd gear unwinding" problem even worse...
(somehow they designed it so reverse and third shared internal parts, presumably with the separate selectors clamping inwards around a common gearset, but only had poorly-immobilised single-screw-direction bolts holding them together, specialised for staying tight when driven forwards as the car would see much more 3rd gear action than most of the other gears; but this meant if you drove too much in reverse, it would make the fastenings come undone for both gears... so you were recommended to put it in R, kick it into motion fairly sharply, and immediately drop back into neutral and coast the rest of the way)
اانل
هبه
Why didnt you mention bodyroll? This thing rolls like a bike in the corners, just in the opposite direction
He did mention the eggs!
Funny thing is, the bodyroll is hugely overstated. A properly rebuilt suspension system is not that bad. I've had the 'pleasure' of driving both examples on the same car, before and after a professional no money spared restoration.
*THE BODY ROLL WAS HORRIBLE ON A BRAND NEW CAR*, what are you talking about.
Bodyroll was indeed horrific, but it was supersmooth, going over huge bumps and craters in the road, like they weren't even there. On a teamevent, we took 25 of these out on rough terrain, was like driving a rolls royce
even better than a rolls Hendrik, because you didn't care about the damage done to the cars, would cost nothing to repair anyway!
The 2CV is a car I drove in Gran Turismo, and that was the first time I've ever been bored playing a GT game... but I'd LOVE to drive this in real life!
It's really the type of driving experience that a car game can't capture sadly.
@Talasas Oh yeah? You've driven it?
If you think the 2CV was boring you haven't driven the any of the 1880s Benz Motorwagens available.
I'll call it a masochism.
And yes. I tried to do a lap on Nurburgring in this.
+ Barrett Mopar driving one of these as fast as you can is frightening.
go to britain
drive french cars
poetry
Fillipe356 Or... go to school and learn how to capitalise names of countries. 😉
@@another3997 tsk tsk tsk
I'm a Brit and all Brits mispronounce Citoën as 'Sitrone' and not 'Sit-row-en' as it should be. We also mispronounce Hyundai as 'Hi-un-die' and not 'Hun-day'. Personally I also mispronounce 'So fancy' as 'Sew Fauncy'. Sew very, very fauncy.
Never give the French the satisfaction of hearing their words pronounced their way!
Robin Tankard Northern Ireland, where people drive Sitrins, Renallts and Pew-jots.
Robin Tankard in Korean Hyundai is pronounced Heeun-deh
I've always pronounced it Sitro-ein with a muted i and accented e. No French turned their heads on me so far.
Paul Hojda I've always used "hai-uhn-die
RIP, Roger Moore. I love that chase.
rdbeyer "go backwards forwards quickly"--she explained the gear box in two secs better than rcr did in two minutes
Best part of the bond franchise as a whole if you ask me.
The two Peugeot 504s that chased Bond’s 2CV down the mountain are also pretty desirable cars today!
I'm french, I'm 32 and it's the first car I drove ( I was 12 years old ). You have to be careful of the windows on bumpy roads, they kind of latch into a little spring in a rubber thingy. There's a plastic grill that clips on the front of the bonnet to reduce cold air from comming in, to help the engine in the winter. You can swap the engine with another citroën, the GS, you can even put an old bmw motorcycle engine in it. The 2 c.v. as mr Regular said, means 2 chevaux vapeur ( steam horses ) but french people call it "deux chevaux" ( two horses ). The suspensions on this car are so soft and long that you pratically can't roll it over. But this lovely little "pot de yaourt" (yogurt tub) or " boîte de sardine " ( tin of sardines ) has an archenemy, the Renault 4L. And if you like the lines of the 2c.v you should check it in the " charleston " paint, bordeaux and black ! Thank you for the review, it brings some memories and it's fun to watch you discorvering cars I know.
Yeah, the Renault 4 GTL is one of the more common cars where i live. Not really a vintage car, it's a "first car" car. And Mr. Regular was so confused with the gear stick and it's not that bad, i've used it in a Renault 4 before.
Fun to know the french nicknames for this great car. I'm dutch, in holland we call them affectionally 'ugly ducklings'. Or just 'duck' :)
"pot de yaourt" and "boite de sardine" apply also to all kinds of little city cars, but the 2 C.V have it's own affectionate name : "deuchdeuch" or "deuch" if you're too lazy =) it's a contraction of "deux" and "chevaux" it sound like dutch but without the T !
Merci tu m'as appris des trucs sur la 2cv que je ne savais pas (jsuis français too)
The R4 was designed by Citroen engineers who had spent the 1950s developing a replacement for the 2CV, but the company was too cash-strapped to bring the ideas to market. Renault was state owned at the time and head-hunted the Citroen designers/engineers to leave Quai de Javal and move to Renault over in Billancourt. They used the knowledge learned at Citroen to develop Renault's first front-wheel-drive car. It became so successful that Renault never designed another RWD car.
French here. you've seen nothing Mr.Regular. Nothing.
We have WAY more.
Renault 4?
French cars that actually work and don't break down?
I'd like to see that!
to be honest there's not much to go wrong with a 2CV :)
RCR vs France when?
1 gen Twingo is truly a masterpiece
The suspension on the 2CV is hilarious. You can literally push one side of the car with one hand and it'll lean about 5-10 degrees.
I fart in your general direction
"I wave my private parts at your auntie!"
Herman Z elderberries yadda yadd hamster yadda yadda hon hon hon.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!
The Renault 4 was designed with the same idea (low maintenance, economy, reliability) and has the same shifter, but an I4 water cooled OHV engine with the gearbox AT THE FRONT! They're also a lot of fun.
The Dauphine was MY favorite, 845cc of pure excitement. Beautiful car and smooth riding.
The 4 was the best part of Romancing The Stone. They saw the R5 come and go.
And, peculiarly, different length wheelbases on each side, because of the odd suspension design...
stereotypical french car... mmmm nothing says baguette more than this
Bruce_Jenner except a white flag.
Reverse gears on tanks?
they all have soft tops to make room for baguettes
You're all idiots.
good. at least we're not french.
all im saying is trabant. drive a trabant Mr. Regular ;)
Check with Doug DeMuro. He loved the Trabant... LOL
Aging Wheels needs to get with RCR, he could drive a Trabant, a 60s-era Saab 96, a Wheego... so many options
A Trabi! Ideally with the original two stroke. Would love that
Citroen 2CV: The car for the guy with the skinniest jeans.
i wish they still made simple bare-bones cars like this.
Sam The Multimedia Man
- Tata Nano comes to mind, honorable descendent of 2CV, VW Beetle, etc. An attempt to motorize people in a cheap way. A good idea who crashed head first in a poor but stupidly "posh" society. :-(
I just want a left hand drive, AWD kei van. I'd drive it to the end of my days.
Check out the new citroen ami
Yeah, to an extent. I do like a bit of safety in the event of a crash lol
They almost do. It's just that regulation keeps them out of most markets in the developed world. Crash and emissions.
I want one.
I want two.
I want to mod the second to make it stealth as fuck on the roads.
Aaron MK bmw bike engine?
If it'll make it go faster like the Bond version, yup.
Though at 9hp then I'm sure anything short of a pedal bike is better.
9hp was the MK1 2CV (1940's - 1970's)
then then upped the power and displacement a bit over the years until
the mk2 (1970's-1991) had at best a 602cc engine and 29hp.
mk1 has a different grille and no C-pillar windows, the mk2 is the one featured.
Aaron MK Hyabusa engine?
Oh damn the owner of 2CV is so cute
I know
Explaining the shifter on this car is like explaining King Crimson: It just works.
From 5:50 Mr Regular becomes the 'Have you ever had a dream' kid.
AutoAgitator
Or the:
Has anyone really been far as decided to use even go want to do look more like?
My father, a civil engineer, worked in the 1950s and 1960s in East Africa on many construction sites. He had a Land Rover, a Jeep and a 2CV. When he had to solve urgently a problem on a bush site, no asphalt road thank you, but bush tracks full of potholes turning into mud river during the rainy season, and he did not need to carry heavy and enormous tools or heavy spare parts, he favoured his 2CV to spare his back. He used to say that he would get there faster with his 2CV, ... yes even with a 2CV.
Ahhhhh, oui oui monsieur 👏🏼
I had an opportunity to sit in a 2CV... didn't get to drive it. The car almost tipped over when I sat inside. Super weird.
"man the CV2 is neat. too bad There's never going to be a regular car review of one."
Later that day RCR posted a "half review" of the CV2.
the US answer to 'shrodinger's hipster' is a chrysler 300. plenty of people drive it unironically, but it is peak irony if you are driving it ironically
I love my 300
Like a straight 300? Non letter car? What year? Is your comment a joke? Maybe it could use a rewrite. Or just make a copy of it. And throw it away.
In the 1970s my cousin was a Marine Embassy Guard in the Netherlands. The were forbidden from owning two sorts of vehicles because they were too dangerous. One was any sort of motorcycle . The other was a 2CV.
The roof of the 2cv of one of my mother’s teachers had flown of at the extreme speed of 80 kilometers per hour.
Speaking of cheap cars, is some Dacia gonna be reviewed?
Obelix Industries G O O D N E W S
W H A T ?
The new Dacia Sandero is out!
Dacia 1300 pick up. God it was the worst car I have seen. All I saw had the chassis in half.
JAMES??
This car was responsible for possibly the greatest ever car chase in a James Bond film... RIP Roger Moore...
And something of an homage in "Castle of Cagliostro", which is rather Bond-like in tone throughout, and has both a 2CV and a Fiat 500 involved in a chase...
"Take the low road!"
(She flips the car)
"Not THAT low!"
Wasn’t there a dude who got stranded in a desert and turned one of these into a bike to get back?
Weird flex.
@@alastairward2774 ikr
My mechanical engineering teacher has one and he daily's it too, one time the clutch broke, he just changed gears without it once out of 1st
The early ones actually had a secondary centrifugal clutch which made this entirely possible - the foot pedal was just to make things smoother between gears, and to let you rev it up a bit harder before engaging drive for hill starts. Don't know if it was maintained into later models... probably died off around the same time fourth stopped being an "overdrive" you could only reach via third.
Even so, that's not too uncommon a thing to be able to do in manual gearbox cars that lack silly American-style lockouts such as not allowing you to run the starter unless the box is in neutral and/or the clutch is pushed in (though if the switch is on the pedal rather than the transmission you might be able to cheat it) and/or you're pressing the brake. I've had some clutch cable and other related failures before ... as long as you can get it moving on the starter in 1st, or abuse the synchros sufficiently, give it a manual push-off, be careful with your approach to traffic lights etc so you can keep rolling uphill and use gravity to get going on downhills... etc... then you've covered the most troublesome part and can generally get away with clutchless shifts the rest of the time. You just generally have to run at somewhat higher revs (so the engine speed falls sufficiently to allow snicking in an upshift with reasonable rev-matching / well timed rhythmic stick movement), not upshift unless you really need to, and be very careful with downshifting, doing it pretty much straight away if you think there's going to be a need for it further up the road... and leave very long braking distances so you can creep along using the brake to hold an artificially low idle instead of stopping completely.
Of course, a lighter car helps, as does an older one, as the transmission parts are likely to be a bit more robust and more heavily built, coming from an age where shaving off grammes wherever possible wasn't so much of a requirement, and small cars happened to be light just because they had smaller bodies, built with flimsier metal, and generally smaller engines with smaller clutches and fewer gears. You can abuse them more without causing damage, and particularly, for those with a 1st gear synchro, you can raise the revs a bit, push the lever against the balking synchro to get the car ever-so-slowly moving, then once it's up to walking pace release stick and throttle and shunt it into a rev-matched first once revs fall to idle. Obviously THAT one only really works on the flat, but the same characteristics make starter-bumping and clumsy attempts at inter-gear revmatching more effective too.
I can state with "experience on the subject" that a clutch was definitely a convenience but not necessarily an obligation. ;-)
30 years VW Beetle, 18 years old guy, GF to visit... Well let's say a small detail, like not having a clutch, wouldn't stop me. LOL 😂
Get into first gear, hit the starter get it going. Change gears ON TIME. I recall traffic lights had to be well negotiated, if not. Stop engine. Repeat first part, no problem.
My car started perfectly which was a considerable help. But could make a bunch of runs pretty much wherever needed without a single gear grinding. In fact it's an amazing learning experience. I could negotiate any gearbox, even without synchro.
for a short time in the 60s they sold them here in Canada alongside their high end models. you sometimes see restored 2CVs on the road
A Citroën 2CV may be slow but thanks to its suspension it can take corners HARD. It will roll to the point of lifting the inside rear wheel off the road, but it won't roll over. You can totally leave faster cars behind you on roundabouts and such.
My father drove one of these into the ground 30 years ago and it became my joyriding vehicle in the tender age of 10, while he had left it parked and unsold and moved on to a little Peugeot. Not that it was possible to kill its engine, but after a couple of hundred thousand miles, it was hard to resist bolting on a 1,3 liter citroen gsa engine, making about 65 horses, and stiffening things up a bit. On such a thing I learnt driving on dirt roads, pretending to be a rally person. Hard to describe the mindfuck for people seeing a curiously fast 2CV driven by someone who looks like a teenager who's not supposed to drive, well, because he is one.
It's also probably the only car in the world where lack of horsepower also turns out to be fun. You either drive like you don't have a care in the world, or you're going through every corner absolutely flat out because momentum is everything and it ends up feeling like a roller coaster, cause however scary the lean angles, it keeps gripping. It's pure fun, fun driving it alone, fun with friends, having pick nicks, having air blow to your face through the vent under the window, opening the top on traffic jams and pretending you're there for the sunlight, traveling in situations in which other cars would have fallen apart, having a full night's sleep in the back as a child, in a 20 hour journey... It defies all notions of how unhealthy loving cars too much might be. It makes it completely justified.
The gears are simple. Imagine a standard 5 speed H pattern, only first gear is actually reverse. So R, 2, 3, 4, 5 is the sequence. Nothing flipped nor inverted
The trabant and the 2cv, both shift surprisingly and amazingly well due to how direct and uncomplicated the gear linkage is (though the transmission design also helps)
0:17 This isn't french
YESSSS I was soooo hoping you'd do a classic Citroen!! You have to drive a DS at some point, we need your DS review as much as your pubes needed a double flush.
'S gotta be those Chevron-cut gears, man. Still wonder why more companies don't use them for transmissions, rather than helical gears
Noise? Wear characteristics?
Needs more accordion and garlic.
Easier way to describe the shifter. Twist it left, get into R (forward) and 1 (back), turn it right a bit, it goes 2(forward) and 3(back), turn it right once more and you get 4.
1:29 your first pronunciation was best
Nope, it's more like "Sitrowhen" or "Sietrowhen"
So it's literally pronounced exactly how it's spelled? What kind of French name is that?
(Although I think the French technically leave the "n" silent so it's more like "Sit-ro-ehhhhh")
Pocket Fluff Productions true,the N is (almost) silent
The N in Citroen is most definitely not silent - listen: fr.forvo.com/word/citro%C3%ABn/
It actually is pronounced exactly how it's spelled. Pretty oddball, isn't it?
I know, three years late. BUT this car looks like the car a 5 year old draws with marker.
Hope you guys get a chance to drive other Citroen gems like the DS, SM and C6
Ooooh, Citroen DS and SM..... *drools slightly*
TOTAL style overload! Two cars so stylish Gok Wan would walk away in shame at his own unstylishness!
Awe yeah! Deux Chevaux!
Much like the Beetle, the 2CV was used as a platform for other models like the Diane (slightly less utilitarian) and the Mehari (slightly more utilitarian).
Don’t forget the beautiful Ami-6
Didn't Richard dryfuss dive one of those in American graffiti
The California Garage
yes
The 2CV wasn't the only french car to have that kind of shifter the Renault 4 and 6 had it but because the engine is mounted backwards Engine is near the firewall and the transmission is on the front of the engine
I run my 3CV (Argentine version of 2cv6) in a voyage of 3000 km and the 2cv and 3cv has indestructibles engines! , great for drive!! nice comfort car, best heater ever!! direct from engine heat too. reach easy 100 km/h speed , enough for trips, the only problems is when you need to pass another vehicle, dont have reaction, that obligate you to lear fine driving skills, and the other problem is front and side winds, but the car is amazing pice of engineering!
No mention of the mechanical high beam, low beam lever? A lever on the dash literally tilts the headlights up and down.
!!!!!!
not all 2cv are soft top, the 2cv camionette or truckette is tin. really cool unit you ve got here and a rare RHD congrat
There is a cv that is a hard top with a trunk it was the Chilean version. It looked ridiculous and there are rumors of some with an automatic shifter but I can’t confirm that.
I have confirmed their existence with my own two eyes and that it was a weird automated clutch thing that is extremely unsafe and unreliable. They can easily put the revs past the max of the engine an cause catastrophic failures in the engine.
Way too many opening still shots of the owner of the car makes you wonder if there was a crush going on between Regular and that guy. And plenty of hand touchy touchy at 3:19 doesn't help. Or, most likely, I'm just full of shit.
he looked 8 feet tall
For his entire almost 3 minute long description of how the shifter works, I sat there enthralled with my lips wrapped around my teeth, wishing I could try it. So cool!
>Mr Regular discussing European cars rather than the usual American junk
>Same genius
>More class
Hnnnnnng
SEEEEEWWW FAWNCEHH
>junk
Um
Enjoy ! group.renault.com/groupe/implantations/nos-representations-commerciales/
btw Nissan and Opel are also french owned
a bit more ? www.groupe-psa.com/fr/groupe-automobile/presence-internationale/
I think this is probably the best review of the 2CV on TH-cam. Bless you Mr.R. Quality as always.
Citroen: when a soapbox racer was too luxurious
I edited this because a certain group of people finished their daily fisting to the 5 different tvs all playing Herbie at different times, only to come on TH-cam and argue why a car that I was making a lighthearted joke about, left a sour taste in their mouth, oh boy, I offended the vw bug club, don't get me wrong beetles are awesome, but I'm pretty sure the dudes getting mad at me for joking about beetles are the same people who put eyelashes and car bras on their cars
The golf 1 wasn't a shit car at all
Beetle was actually very smart design for it's time.
The beetle isn't the same as a golf 1...
Also, they're both not shit. The ones built in the US, yeah...
Except it's basically better than the Beetle in every way. Beetles are dull.
Beetles in Australia are f u c k i n g t e r r i b l e, my nan had one in the 70s I think it was a 68 model?, it leaked it, it broke down all the time, basically it was a 2014 chevy cruze in 1971, that's where I'm coming from
"Quantum superposition" is a perfect phrase that I don't think either Peter Egan or Paul Frere would have ever thought to use to describe the 2CV. Great vid. I think every U.S. car enthusiast has wondered what this car is like to drive.
The tin snail 🐌🐌🐌🐌
L'escargot de fer
What about the Nissan s-cargo
I really like the owner's jacket.
ok jay leno calm down
This car deserved better than jet-lag and shoddy camerawork
1983 car with vintage design... pretty weird.
Designed before WWII, which may explain it. The early ones only had one headlamp!
Liam Godden the prototypes were hidden from the Germans they still turn up now and again hidden in roofs etc someone found one a couple of years ago. Remember the humble beetle was in production for longer. Almost every country has a car that simply crosses the generations.
Also pretty lazy
How long was it before you could drink the tap water in France?
Never mind 1983, they were still selling these well into the 90s. They remained popular for their simplicity, robustness, cheap purchase and running costs, and timeless charming style... what killed them off was emissions regs - the engine was essentially unchanged since the 40s but for a bore/stroke job and a few evolutionary refinements, so was an exhaust composition disasterzone (I think it even still demanded leaded or lead-replacement fuel right to the end), and Citroen didn't fancy putting any investment into cleaning it up whatsoever. More profitable to just encourage people to transition to their newer AX/BX and Saxo/Xsara models. (The AX being somewhat of a spiritual successor, as it was also small, cheap, basic, interestingly styled, and very very French; so French that I had to reject one as my own first car because my British feet couldn't fit on the brake pedal thanks to a hackish RHD conversion)
My introduction to the 2CV was watching Shirley Maclaine drive one like a maniac in some awful, forgotten Sunday afternoon movie on TV in the 1980s.
Always had a bit of crush on the 2CV. Guy at the local golf course has one. Sometimes you don't need to go fast. Just go.
Speed Kills. Buy a 2CV. Live forever.
well said
If you can get up to about 35-45mph you're already going about 16x faster than someone walking and 4x faster than a typical cyclist (a regular person on an old style safety bike anyway; 2 to 3x faster than a fit rider on a modern bike), and twice as fast as a horse being pushed moderately hard, which is a considerable improvement over anything the common man could manage before, and a good rival for most everyday affordable motorcycles before Honda came along and demonstrated that you could get good power from a small engine by pumping up the revs (and even then, their C50s and C90s, the world's most popular bikes of all time, occupied a similar speed range).
It's probably why a lot of the most iconic early mass-motorisation cars offered about that much speed. You can do a lot with it, that you couldn't do with any previous mode of transport, and even vs motorcycles (optionally with sidecars) you could carry more people and stuff, in better comfort and safety and with better weather protection. Legally speaking at least, most of motoring history in most countries of the world you've never really been able to go much faster than about twice that speed, and even then you need a good quality, preferably expressway or freeway standard road to sustain it instead of being frequently busted back down to 50 or quite a lot less. So your potential improvement _from_ that point, even ignoring how affordable cars didn't start getting engines and aerodynamics (and fuel economy) that allowed you to (mostly-)illegally go faster still until relatively recently, is only about twofold. Compared to the improved average speed the basic model already offers, it's fairly small beer.
And, well, if you haven't got somewhere to be in a hurry, and you're not going to get in anyone's way (at least, not that you can't safely and promptly get out of the way of), it's a rather pleasant and relaxing speed to travel at. Very economical as well.
Where abouts in the UK did you do your filming?
Bro... I'm stoned af and that explanation of the transmission has me questioning my existence.
It's nice to see reviews of cars most people would consider "crappy" where they're talked about in context of when and where they were made and given a fair shake. A lot of TH-cam really tries to roast everything, point and laugh, "OMG, it sucks!" And it just gets tiring.
Alfie Munkenbeck, sounds just like a 2CV driver should be named.
The Mythbusters where able to take this apart really easily
NOT AMERICAN
Yung Tityboi *high quality
Desert Fearce it's French so ----> low quality
Jean-Louis Stevens To be honest id rather have a French car that breaks down on me all the time than an American car that runs like clockwork. I almost bought a 1985 Peugeot 505 wagon for $25 once!
Michael Yachnis I myself would rather have a German, Japanese or American car because I don't like French cars. I mean there's a reason why the Renault logo looks like a jack stand
Jean-Louis Stevens Oh believe mw i know its stupid. we just dont have any french cars
Can't say I've ever seen the Citroen 2CV on campus
I'll be sure to give him a wave if I see him
You'll likely hear him coming first... those flat twins have a very distinctive engine note.
for the next season can you guys do a thing about British Leyland
I was hoping that somehow they'd get to drive a BL Princess but those cars are probably all scrap by now.
snoballuk pretty much any uk car from the 70s&80s rusted like crazy.
Think about this, this car was first design in the late 1930's and 40's and it got a better engine than the chevy chevette and also got a way better and more moderne suspension.
I never knew the Chevette had an engine making less than 30hp...
2 cylinder opposed? Is that like, half a boxer ? :D
bmw motorcycle mah boy =)
One-third of a Corvair engine. One-half of a classic V-Dub mill.
No, it's a Boxer Twin. You need a minimum of two opposed cylinders for a boxer, and essentially that's the "true" form because human boxers only have two fists. Unless you're thinking of a flat four being two guys facing each other and fistbumping...
(would a flat six then become a boxer and a half? a hexboxer, with a boxer quad inbetween the two?)
You didnt even mention the suspension or do a full speed whip around a tight bend. Missed the out on the real fun of it completely .
But alas an rcr 2cv Reveiw! i wanted this, i got it, now im sticky. Where is the bog roll.
Don't feel pressured to pronounce French cars the way they do in the UK, because they practically intentionally mangle French pronunciation. Peugeot isn't supposed to be pronounced "PeRgot", but because English doesn't do a lot of "eu" sounds, and Jeremy Clarkson will go out of his way to mispronounce foreign words, the British have inserted an "R" sound where there is none, and even though the common American pronunciation of "Poo-got" isn't 100% right either, it's closer. And in Citroen, the emphasis in French is on the last syllable, and it technically has 3 syllables, but in the UK they pronounce it like "Citron", with 2. I LOVE the UK, but just because they pronounce a word one way, doesn't mean it's right.
I don't know anyone who says "PeRgot". As far as I knew, it was "Perzjoh", and if that's still not right then it can't be too far from the truth as it matches with the sounds I was taught in French lessons at school. Similarly "Ceetroen" (whatever difference the accent makes is pretty subtle, and certainly isn't clear when said in an allegedly actual French accent), and "Renno", rather than "Citron"/"Citrown" or "Renolt".
The manufacturer's TV adverts drill the correct pronunciation into us quite well. Don't take Top Gear's deliberate silliness as your gospel; if Clarkson is mispronouncing something to get a laugh, _he's mispronouncing something to get a laugh,_ and his domestic audience derive some of the comedy from _knowing_ he's saying it wrong.
I said "pewjit" at first until I heard the commercial for a local car dealer who sold them and they said "poo-zhoh", and I'm like, "Ohhhhh."
Another typical engine swap was a bmw r/100 engine with 70-80hp.
I saw one of these in Alaska. i have no idea why it was up there, i'd imagine every hill and mountain would probably give it's engine a conniption.
It can go uphill.. slowly, but it can ! XD
The better translation is "two TAX horsepower" because originally hp was a function of displacement and a displacement based tax was written into law in 19-oh-whatever as a proxy for taxing power. As time went on real hp per displacement exceeded the tax hp rating, but the law was never updated.
It's THE most charming car ever
I see it and I smile 😁😊
I have a Citroën Méhari, which is a 2CV with a plastic boxy body. These things are the fastest things you can drive on a dirt road, and it's so much fun to drive !
after watching this is want one, the speed limit is 40mph here amyway
Malta? Channel Islands? Bahamas?
Gear shift is brilliant and simple.
Forward and back. Left and right.
Gears grouped by use. First reverse for parking. 2nd and 3rd for normal driving. Overdrive on side.
Rcr uploaded. I guess exam study can wait
Yes we do too have a hipster car counterpart, it's a Mitsubishi Evo or a Subaru WRX
its soo French.
and the owner.. super cute
Compared to the 2CV of my high school crush my 1st gen. Fiat Panda felt like a Mercedes.
You should do more videos when jet lagged. You are funny.
"blah blah french, blah blah eggs, blah blah ploughed fields" - haha, best summary ever of that old line ^_^