Home » Let’s Talk About The Shifter In The Citroën 2CV: Cold Start

Let’s Talk About The Shifter In The Citroën 2CV: Cold Start

Cs 2cvshift Top
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So last night I was talking to our own Stephen Walter Gossin about the 2CV he recently acquired, and the subject of how the hell to shift the damn thing came up. It’s a subject that I enjoy a lot because it’s one of those things that can initially seem baffling until you think about it in a certain specific way, then everything starts to make sense. That feeling where something snaps from baffling to understandable is one of the more underrated sensations of being alive, so I’m hoping maybe you’ll feel it, too.

The 2CV shifter is a bit baffling because, at first glance, it just doesn’t seem like a normal, H-pattern shifter. It sticks out of the dashboard on a perfectly horizontal shaft that then angles up and ends in a big shiny spherical knob. At first, if you’re unfamiliar, it’s hard to know what to do with it.

Vidframe Min Top
Vidframe Min Bottom

Here, look:

Cs 2cvshift 3

So, you see, you just have a shaft with a kink in it, and then a ball perched on top. Depending on the year of the car, the way the shift pattern is shown in diagram may not offer too much help, either:

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Cs 2cvshift Patterns

So, it’s at least a sort-of regular H-pattern, once you get past the dogleg first and the strange extra curves Citroën dash designers liked to throw in, but how does this mostly horizontal rod work for an H-pattern? It doesn’t move up and down, so it’s not an H-pattern on a vertical plane.

The official diagrams mostly just make things more confusing, if you ask me:

Cs 2cvshift 2

There’s pushing and pulling and…twisting? going on here. So what exactly is going on?

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Well, you can get a clue if you know what’s going on under the hood:

Cs 2cvshift Cutaway

See the shifter? Look what it’s doing: it’s going through the dashboard to link up with what looks like a normal floor shifter, only it’s under the hood!

If you want to see this in action, you’re in luck, because I once drove a 2CV with no body, and you can see the shifter working here:

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Man, Otto was so much smaller then! How is he taller than me now? Time, you cruel, slippery snake.

Okay, do you see what’s happening? When you’re shifting with the dash lever, it’s really just a stick connected to the real shifter under the hood! The thing that helped this all snap into making sense for me was imagining that there was no dash lever, and my arm was just going through the dash, and reaching the shift lever under the hood:

Cs 2cvshift 1

See that? With this image in your head, it makes sense. Pushing and pulling is just moving a normal floor shifter forward and back, and when you rotate the cranked dash lever, you’re just moving the floor-type lever side to side. So it really is just a regular H-pattern, you just can’t actually see it, and you’re using the dash shift lever as a proxy for your own hand.

Does this make sense? I hope so. I mean, you never know when you might need to drive a 2CV. This guy was probably happy he took the time to figure it out, I bet:

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5.7WK2
5.7WK2
3 months ago

SWG: Hey can you put that Citroen in neutral for me to drag it up on the trailer?
Me: (surprised pikachu face) yea man, I guess?

Slow Joe Crow
Slow Joe Crow
3 months ago

I briefly drove a 2CV in 1990, the shifter was trippy but you could get the hang of in a few minutes. Then again I was driving a 2 on the tree forklift at the time.

Dogisbadob
Dogisbadob
3 months ago

Is the same thing Renault used on the 4? I think the R4 has a pull-out shifter like that, too

OttosPhotos
OttosPhotos
3 months ago
Reply to  Dogisbadob

Vague memories of an uncle’s friend showing off the shifter of his R4 when I was a kid. Looks similar, but maybe without the twisting?

Guillaume Maurice
Guillaume Maurice
3 months ago
Reply to  Dogisbadob

Yes, the 4L also had a similar shifter.

Sklooner
Sklooner
3 months ago

My dad was a pilot and they lost an engine and had to stay in Martinique for a week, he had lived in France so knew how to drive one of these and was the designated driver, this was in the early 60s so he was also a designated drinker

Fjord
Fjord
3 months ago

And for all the people who think of 2CVs as shitboxes, you’re doing it wrong. If you think of them as an exceptionally refined high-speed tractor (which is what they are), they are much more impressive.

Fjord
Fjord
3 months ago

The weird bit is still the 3rd to 4th shift though. Two of your diagrams show you can go from 3rd to 4th without going through neutral, and that was the case in my 1956 example. You couldn’t actually get that shift by using the other pattern you show. I never did figure that one out.

MiniDave
MiniDave
3 months ago

I never understood why people were so flummoxed by this…..it seemed perfectly natural to me the first time I drove one.

Good explanation, Torch….

And yes, Otto has grown a BUNCH!

Last edited 3 months ago by MiniDave
Chronometric
Chronometric
3 months ago

Takeaways.
Best Bond chase ever.
What a unique and clever French solution to a faraway transmission.
I used to think the Roger Moore Bond was silly. Now I miss him.
The 2CV is cuddlier than a Golden Retriever puppy.
Carole Bouquet is <chef’s kiss>.

Wezel Boy
Wezel Boy
3 months ago
Reply to  Chronometric

I’m feeling less guilty with the thought that Moonraker is the best Bond film.

Chronometric
Chronometric
3 months ago
Reply to  Wezel Boy

When Bond went into space, the Roger Moore absurdity reached new altitudes.

Urban Runabout
Urban Runabout
3 months ago
Reply to  Chronometric

The idea that Grace Jones and Tanya Robert would have willingly gotten into bed with ol’ Roger Moore was completely ludicrous.

Double Wide Harvey Park
Double Wide Harvey Park
3 months ago
Reply to  Urban Runabout

Not so sure about that. I ran into him in an elevator about 20 years ago, and as a straight guy I can tell you the man had epic rizz.

Cars? I've owned a few
Cars? I've owned a few
3 months ago
Reply to  Chronometric

Love those Peugeot 504 pursuit vehicles too.

Chronometric
Chronometric
3 months ago

I just started watching “Troppo” on Amazon Prime. Thomas Jane drives a 504 in Northern Australia.

Cars? I've owned a few
Cars? I've owned a few
3 months ago
Reply to  Chronometric

Thanks! I’ll have to check it out. The 504s in France/Europe and really the rest of the world, didn’t have the stupid sealed beam headlights mine had here in Les Etats Uni and looked so much cooler for it.

Mrbrown89
Mrbrown89
3 months ago

and for me it was weird that I had to pull a ring on the shifter to put reverse on my Jaguar lol this is next level

Cars? I've owned a few
Cars? I've owned a few
3 months ago
Reply to  Mrbrown89

When I was like 11, I remember asking my parents what would happen if someone was going 120 in a Jaguar XKE and shifted it into reverse. Apparently, Jaguar took that into consideration.

Captain Muppet
Captain Muppet
3 months ago

My first car was a 2CV, so that shifter is normal for me.

The 23 cars that have followed have all been weird.

Matthew Binns
Matthew Binns
3 months ago

Oh and I might add you could insert the jack handle into a hole in the front bumper and crank the engine by hand, which as a student with no money for a new battery, I did quite often, not just for the fun of it.

Guillaume Maurice
Guillaume Maurice
3 months ago
Reply to  Matthew Binns

It was not possible on the late models ( 2CV6 ).

Kurt Hahn
Kurt Hahn
3 months ago

I had a 1984 2CV6 that could be started with the handle (so just a few years before they stopped making them). There was no hole to insert the handle from the outside, you had to open the hood, but other than that it was still the same principle.

Guillaume Maurice
Guillaume Maurice
3 months ago
Reply to  Kurt Hahn

That’s what I meant, the hole had been removed. So technically you couldn’t start it with a handle unless you knew it could be done with the bonnet open. ( which most people didn’t know )

Martin Ibert
Martin Ibert
3 months ago

It’s actually very simple to shift. I did drive a 2CV for a few days many, many years ago (1987, actually). I do admit that the rental car guy showed me how it works, and I found it pretty convincing. To get out of tight spaces (or into them, but I needed to get the thing out of a very tight parking lot first thing), you push and pull while the lever is turned to the left, to alternate between reverse and first. For normal in-town driving, you push and pull with ball upright to alternate between second and third. And on the highway, you put it into fourth and just leave it there.
It’s perfect. I didn’t know, or care, how that thing moves the gears. Why would I? I knew what I needed to do for the car to do what I needed it to do. What more would I need?

Matthew Binns
Matthew Binns
3 months ago

By the time I bought my first Citroen Ami (same ripsnorting 2 cylinder 0.625 liter motor as the 2CV) I had been schooled in the dash shifter by a series of family Renault 4’s. The shift pattern was different and so was the driving style. The Renaults 4 cylinder was free revving but the two banger Citroen had a relatively large flywheel to smooth out the missing two cylinders and so ‘spirited’ driving was achievable only by keeping the GO pedal to the floor while shifting. Well timed shifts resulted in a much needed bump in speed, and increased clutch wear.
A truly great cheap car, whether Ami or 2CV body styles.

DonK
DonK
3 months ago

Also seen here in an RCR review, which comes to a similar conclusion as how to think about the shifter.

https://youtu.be/XCYH4kpsUyc?si=fC5Pz41sZpzW-9pZ

Last edited 3 months ago by DonK
Flyingstitch
Flyingstitch
3 months ago

Once you wrap your brain around it, seems like this would make it much harder to miss a throw than with a non-gated floor shifter. I’m all for that.

Sundance
Sundance
3 months ago

A 2CV4 was my first car (small block 423ccm, 23hp). Shifting this way (similar to a Renault R4) is wonderful. From 1st to 2nd just push slightly forward, the knob will come up at the neutral line and the shifter will slip in 2nd position. For 3rd just pull back and going to 4th push til neutral and ‘screw’ the knob to the right with a little push forward.
You just don’t have to be brutal, just use two fingers and your thumb.

MATTinMKE
MATTinMKE
3 months ago

How many times did you do that spit take?

Lew Schiller
Lew Schiller
3 months ago

So you have your own Stephen Walter Gossin? Hmm…we’ve been considering that but I think we’re going to rent one for now.

Stephen Walter Gossin
Stephen Walter Gossin
3 months ago
Reply to  Lew Schiller

Ya know, with interest rates these days…

Lew Schiller
Lew Schiller
3 months ago

Yeah..and they’ve gotten really expensive.

TOSSABL
TOSSABL
3 months ago

An H-pattern column shifter makes me irrationally happy. Between the funky styling, the legendary suspension, and that shifter, I seriously covet a 2CV. Videos I’ve seen of people driving them suggest they are one of the most hilarious shitboxes available—and my life has a serious deficiency of shitboxery at the moment

Captain Muppet
Captain Muppet
3 months ago
Reply to  TOSSABL

Between the ages of 17 and 21 I drove my 2CV absolutely flat out like an irresponsible bastard.

This would have been antisocial in a real car, but to the rest of the world I was just normal traffic.

I remember planning some overtakes miles in advance, it’s so slow you really have to focus on every little thing.

Such a terrible car, so much fun.

Double Wide Harvey Park
Double Wide Harvey Park
3 months ago
Reply to  Captain Muppet

Idk if it’s a terrible car. If you think of it as a car, then I guess it is a terrible car. But is it really a car?

Captain Muppet
Captain Muppet
3 months ago

I suppose it could just be the worlds greatest pram?

Morgan Thomas
Morgan Thomas
2 months ago
Reply to  Captain Muppet

“This would have been antisocial in a real car, but to the rest of the world I was just normal traffic.”
There’s a real joy in driving a slow car fast – no real chance of getting speeding tickets, and nobody really notices.
Once I had to help a friend by picking up a Honda 50cc moped he had rented for a friend (as part of the process of transferring his Greek motorbike licence into an Australian one) and on the drive back to his place, we drag raced each other at every red light. But being a 50cc Honda vs. a 4 cylinder Holden Torana, even launching as hard as possible on a green light, we probably looked like we were just driving normally, and were probably actually holding up traffic!

Ncbrit
Ncbrit
3 months ago

Alas another classic where pricing has reached unattainable levels.

Stephen Walter Gossin
Stephen Walter Gossin
3 months ago
Reply to  Ncbrit

I’ll have one for sale out of Wilmington NC for a steeply discounted price in a few weeks.

TOSSABL
TOSSABL
3 months ago

What’s that price?
Depending, I’m quite serious: the Roadster is a blast—but I miss driving under-powered crap flat-out

Stephen Walter Gossin
Stephen Walter Gossin
3 months ago
Reply to  TOSSABL

Hit me up in a couple weeks once I have gone through it and maybe we can make some magic happen!
I’d love for this car to stay in The Greater Expanded Autopian Universe/with a fellow Autopian.

Double Wide Harvey Park
Double Wide Harvey Park
3 months ago

Will there be a writeup? I’m jonesing for fresh Gossinery.

Stephen Walter Gossin
Stephen Walter Gossin
3 months ago

I’m ridiculously behind on writing, but hopefully will have something here on these pages again soon! Thanks for the kind sentiment, Harv!

Double Wide Harvey Park
Double Wide Harvey Park
2 months ago

Imma keep coming back every day until I get my Gosshenanigans or I die, whichever comes first.

Hoonicus
Hoonicus
3 months ago

SWG we know you’re a good egg, but for the love autopia, this Has To end up in Torch’s possession! I can’t think of anyone who would enjoy it more, and just putting a permanent smile on his face is worth it. I bet he’d let you take your pick of a project in trade.

10001010
10001010
3 months ago

There’s a 2CV here in town with a bumper sticker that reads “I think your car looks funny too”.

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
3 months ago

Too bad, back then, they didn’t have a handy, dandy touch screen where they could place the shift controls

Last edited 3 months ago by Canopysaurus
Mark Tucker
Mark Tucker
3 months ago

That shifter is the main reason I want to drive a 2CV someday. That, and the weird floaty suspension.

A. Barth
A. Barth
3 months ago

it’s at least a sort-of regular H-pattern, once you get past the dogleg first

Woohoo, a racing layout!

If we don’t look at it too closely I think we could also say it qualifies as a gated shifter. 😉

Adrian Clarke
Adrian Clarke
3 months ago
Reply to  A. Barth

Just like the Mondial!

A. Barth
A. Barth
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

They really are two peas in a pod.

Double Wide Harvey Park
Double Wide Harvey Park
3 months ago
Reply to  Adrian Clarke

And more reliable!

ExAutoJourno
ExAutoJourno
3 months ago

Amazingly enough, it really doesn’t take long to get used to a 2CV shifter. The motions are quickly picked up and, like riding a bicycle, never forgotten.

Of course, I had a Honda 600 before ever getting to drive a 2CV. That had a shifter very like the Cit’s, but operating in a more vertical plane.

I wish youse guys would quite writing about 2CVs. I’m still jonesing for one, and you’re not helping.

Last edited 3 months ago by ExAutoJourno
Scoutdude
Scoutdude
3 months ago
Reply to  ExAutoJourno

I was going to say it seems similar to the Honda 600 shifter. The “roll” into reverse on that did take a bit to get used to.

Stephen Walter Gossin
Stephen Walter Gossin
3 months ago
Reply to  ExAutoJourno

I mean, with one sitting in my driveway next to an ’03 Stratus Coupe, there may be some additional 2CV content upcoming in the next few weeks. Apologies in advance!

Collegiate Autodidact
Collegiate Autodidact
3 months ago
Reply to  ExAutoJourno

Yeah, the internet has been both a boon and a bane. We get to learn about cool stuff and then people want such stuff with the consequence of the price of such stuff then hiking to unconscionable heights, gah. So, yeah, sometimes I’ll think “Oh, that’s mighty cool” and then immediately switch to thinking “Shut up, shut up!! Stop spilling the beans!! You damn blabbermouth!!”
(No, I won’t provide examples of cool stuff starting to become unobtainable, for obvious reasons.)

Dale Mitchell
Dale Mitchell
3 months ago
Reply to  ExAutoJourno

Saw one for sale last Saturday, inside the former Sears store at the mall in Rapid City, SD.
You are welcome

DONALD FOLEY
DONALD FOLEY
3 months ago
Reply to  Dale Mitchell

Burgundy and black two-tone paint? Shown in mall reviewer Google photo from September 2021.

Double Wide Harvey Park
Double Wide Harvey Park
3 months ago
Reply to  ExAutoJourno

They made quadrillions of them, and they can be repaired with a pocket knife and dental floss, so you should be able to find one.

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