The History of the TPV / 2CV

The concept of the 2CV began in 1935 when Pierre-Jules Boulanger, Citroen's MD, drove out into the countryside and got stuck in the traffic caused by a village fete in the Auvergne. He was surrounded by carts, horse-drawn carriages and handcarts, but not a single motorised vehicle.
The reason why rural farmers didn't own cars was that they were too expensive, considered too much of a responsibility, too big and heavy for a woman to drive, and not practical for carrying milk to market or herding cattle.

Boulanger realised that if he could produce a cheap, simple and rugged car, a vast untapped market would be opened up. Citroën's design office took on the project, then codenamed "Becassine" (Snipe).

"I want four wheels and a settee under an umbrella" he announced to Maurice Broglie, his astonished design chief, "a car that will carry two farmers in their working clothes and fifty kilos of potatoes or a small barrel of wine, have a maximum speed of 60kmph (38mph) and do 100 kilometers per 3 litres of fuel (0ver 90mpg). The car must also be capable of carrying a basket of eggs over a ploughed field without breaking a single one and its price must be less than a third of that of the Traction Avant.."        The team set to work.........

Pierre-Jules Boulanger	Toute Petit Voiture
The project was called the "Toute Petit Voiture" or very small car.

	Flaminio Bertoni was entrusted to work on the body of the car, and Andre Lefebvre on the mechanics. In 1937 the first prototype was finished in which the engine of Bertoni’s BMW motorbike was fitted. The TPV, with its flimsy aluminium body, erratic water-cooled engine and soft, saggy suspension would have been a disaster for Citroen, but in May Boulanger ordered 250 cars to be assembled in time for the 1939 Paris Salon.
Flaminio Bertoni		Andre Lefebvre

On 2nd September 1939 the first car rolled off the production line... The next day, France declared war on Germany, the country mobilised, and the curtain came down on the TPV with just one car completed. The remaining 249 cars were in various stages of construction and the parts of the assembled cars were hidden in a barn at Ferté-Vidame to be protected from the Germans.

Over the war years, Boulanger was able to re-think the TPV and the whole project was renamed the "2CV", or "Deux Chevaux".

In 1944 after the liberation of Paris, Bertoni took up the project again and on the evening of 10th October 1948, three heavily-shrouded cars were smuggled on to the stand at the Paris Salon de l’Automobile amid tight security.
The next day Pierre Boulanger stepped on to the Citroen podium, shook hands with the French President and proudly removed the shrouds.

The 1948 2CV		Final Production Model

Production started at Citroen's Levallois factory in Spring 1949, with 924 being built. The 1949 2CV, known as the "Type A", was powered by a 375cc, 9bhp air-cooled engine. It had a full length canvas roof, which continued below the rear window to form the bootlid. There was no ignition key (a turn switch activated the ignition, and a pull-start fired the engine), and no way of locking the doors. There were no indicators so the lower part of the front windows hinged up to allow hand-signals, and the only colour option was dark grey. None the less, it was the cheapest car available anywhere, and there was soon a six-year waiting list.

The 2CV has changed, sometimes radically, sometimes only in detail for almost every one of its 42 year run and after its great success, production stopped in France on February 29th 1988 and whilst it continued in Mangualde, Portugal until July 25th 1990 it was only a matter of time before the labour-intensive, practically hand-built cars were killed off, a convenient excuse of 'new emissions controls' being used.

The 2CV quietly drifted out of production and into history...