Citroen's legend way out in front

By ALASTAIR SLOANE.

When judges reached the serious stage of the Car of the Century competition last year, a handful of carmakers had two cars in the shortlist of 26. Citroen was the only carmaker with three.

The 2CV was there because it was one of the most practical vehicles ever built and the DS because it took design and function to a new level.

But the Traction Avant had an even better pedigree - it was the first mass-market front-wheel-drive car, one that would change for ever the direction of automotive engineering.

Before 1934, when the Traction Avant was launched, all mass-produced vehicles were rear-wheel-drives. A few engineers had experimented with front-wheel-drive vehicles but only one company, Italy's Lancia in the mid-1920s, had built a working model. However, it was costly and soon shelved.

So why was it that French company Citroen, and not another carmaker, produced the Traction Avant?

One major factor was the determination of the company's founder, Andre Citroen. He saw the front-drive Traction Avant as a way of leaving the competition light years behind.

The work of Citroen's skilled engineers was crucial, too. Citroen himself said they were the only people capable of overcoming the challenges involved.

But as good as his engineers were, Citroen needed someone to share his vision. This came from a rival quarter. In early 1933, Citroen met Andre Lefebvre, a young engineer who was working for Renault.

Citroen was greatly impressed by Lefebvre, who had earned a reputation for being bold and innovative. He soon hired him to work on a new project he knew would appeal to the young man's daring: a front-drive car for mass production.

To Lefebvre, front-drive made sense. "Try pushing a wheelbarrow up a flight of stairs. Personally, I'd rather pull it," he told one of his early critics.

Citroen and Lefebvre reasoned that front-drive, where the engine and gearbox rest on the front wheels, lowered a car's centre of gravity and improved the grip of the driving wheels to enhance road-holding.

They moved quickly. In August 1933, two prototypes were ready for testing. In October, production was approved, at a plant Citroen had started renovating months before. In November, the body tooling was ordered from an American firm called Budd.

The only hiccup came in the first few weeks of 1934. A planned automatic gearbox was dropped in favour of a conventional manual, which Lefebvre and his engineers built in 12 days.

On March 24, 1934, Citroen unveiled his dream car to dealers. It was called the Traction Avant 7A and it had been designed and built inside 13 months - a unique achievement even by today's sophisticated standards. Three models would be available, Citroen told the dealers: the 7A, 11 and 15 (the 22 would come later).

It was powered by a 1.3-litre four-cylinder engine developing 23kW and went on sale in France on May 2, 1934. Reaction was frenzied. The press called it sensational. Rivals called it an engineering breakthrough, a remarkable pioneering achievement.

They marvelled at its technical innovations, which included front-wheel-drive, hydraulic brakes, floating engine, independent wheels, suspension with torsion bars and a single-piece body.

But if the motoring world was astonished by the engineering sophistication of the 7A, it would be equally astonished by the speed at which Citroen built variants and replacements.

A month after its appearance, the 7A was replaced by the 7B, which had a more powerful 1.5-litre engine.

At the same time, Citroen brought out a sports variant, called the 7S, powered by a 1.9-litre engine developing about 34kW.

Citroen's fast-track development continued. In September 1934, at the Paris motor show, it trotted out a range of Traction Avant models, including a new 7S called the Legere, or Light.

But the star of the show was another newcomer, a longer and wider model called the 11, later to become the 11 Normale or 11 Large.

Months later, the 7C and its 1.6-litre engine replaced the 7B. And so it went on.

In 1938, the Familiale and Commerciale models appeared. So too did the 15 Six, the premium Traction Avant model with a 2.8-litre engine and 55kW on tap.

This car became known as the Queen of the road, mainly because it had a top speed of 135 km/h and could cruise all day at 100 km/h.

After the Second World War and up to 1957, three other models were made: the 11 Legere, 11 Normale and an updated 15 Six.

A variant of the 15 Six was the 15 H, which pioneered hydropneumatic suspension, another Citroen innovation still in use today.

The new suspension system proved so efficient at isolating the car and its occupants from irregular road surfaces that Citroen loaned it to Rolls-Royce - at a price, of course.

Between 1934 and 1957 Citroen built 759,123 models of the Traction Avant.