Rejoice! Citroen Is Reportedly Working On A New 2CV

With all the uncertainty the global car industry’s faced over the past few months, it feels like we could use a bit of good news. Right on cue, as if like magic, here’s some now. A new report from Autocar claims that French carmaker Citroen is reviving the 2CV, its postwar people’s car that helped put France on four wheels and became a style icon.

If you aren’t terribly familiar with the original 2CV, it was a gloriously and unrepentantly weird car in a manner only Citroën seemed to be able to achieve at the time. Early ones had a canvas sunroof that ran all the way from the windshield header to the rear bumper, a corrugated hood, and an air-cooled flat-two engine making all of nine horsepower. The front and rear suspension was tied together on each side of the car in such a way that loading the car up with weight lengthened its wheelbase, the front brakes on early models were inboard drums, and the windshield wipers were originally driven off the speedometer cable, providing a very rudimentary form of variable speed.

Oh, and if all of this seems a bit strange, you should see the TPV prototypes that set the stage for the 2CV. On those things, the seats were hammocks hung from the roof, and many featured just one headlight as two weren’t legally required in France at the time. It all sounds like a bit of a strange stop-gap idea, yet the 2CV became far more than just a transitional car for France. If you combine every 2CV variant together including the ones built in England, Argentina, Belgium, Spain, Chile, Portugal, Uruguay, Yugoslavia, and Iran, production ran from 1948 to 1990, totaling nine and a quarter million cars.

So why did the 2CV last longer than the Iron Curtain given the pace of Western car development in the latter half of the 20th century? Well, it was comfortable, it was spacious for its footprint, it was simple, it was relatively cheap, it was durable, and it was distinctive. The 2CV might’ve looked and gone like a tin snail, but that was a feature, not a bug. From Western Europe to South America to the Middle East, the 2CV was and still is loved, which means a revived model has awfully big shoes to fill.

Still, that doesn’t seem to be stopping Citroën from trying. While Citroën may not have been interested in reviving the 2CV in the past, it seems like plans may have changed. As Autocar reports:

Preliminary design work on a successor to the car that is widely credited with mobilising post-war France is under way, a senior source has confirmed, although the project is currently at an early stage.

The possibility of another cute car being born into this world sounds great, but if Citroën’s serious about a new 2CV, it’s going to be a tricky thing to get right. The 2CV was more than just stylish, it was unapologetically cheap. In an electrified landscape, that’s going to require some serious cost cutting without compromising on soul.

Can it be done? Quite possibly. Stellantis already has its Smart Car Platform, no relation to the Mercedes-Benz subsidiary Smart. Designed for electrification and sized for entry-level cars, it can accept battery packs as small as 29.2 kWh, which will be critical in driving costs down. It already comes underneath the €23,300 ë-C3, although cleaving a few grand off of that price tag to make an affordable electric 2CV would be no mean feat.

Still, it’s not out of the question, although we’ll still be waiting a few years at a minimum to see where this report goes. As Autocar posits, “There is no indication when a new 2CV might arrive, but a typical four-year development cycle would put it on track to be launched in 2028.” Hey, that’s when the original 2CV turns 80. Considering Citroën hasn’t had a U.S. presence in decades, it’s unlikely a 2CV possible revival will cross the Atlantic. However, that won’t stop us from dreaming.

(Photo credits: Citroën)

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