ferrarif1fan89
06-08-2005, 04:56 PM
I fucking love this car for some reason.
Originally published in Consumer Reports, March 1970, Volume 35, Number 3
The Citroën DS21 Pallas
An Automotive Anomaly
Late in 1956, CU tested one of the first front-wheel-drive Citroën DS sedans to come over from France. We remarked at the time: "To say that a car is new and different is only to say that it is interesting, not necessarily that it is good. ... The Citroën DSl9 is essentially a connoisseur's item." Thirteen years later, some 27,000 Citroëns having since crossed the Atlantic, we tested a 1969 DS21 Pallas sedan. (The 1970 Citroëns won't come on the U.S. market until spring.) It's not new (it differs only subtly from the 1956 car), but it's still interesting - as much an automotive anomaly as ever. Its major advantage - very comfortable seats, a very good ride, good handling in normal driving and good fuel econom - come at a fairly high price, at least in the model tested. And to judge by our test car, problems of repair and upkeep may constitute a major headache for Citroën owners.
Truly innovative engineering went into the Citroën's unique suspension system. It maintains level car height from light to full load and gives a good ride over almost all road surfaces. But the same engineering, after 13 years, still has not brought forth a fully automatic transmission, an automatic choke or even self-cancelling turn signals.
The heart of the Citroën's mechanical uniqueness as a machine is its hydraulic system. The engine drives a pump, which circulates, under pressure, a special green fluid through a hundred-odd feet of tubing, connections and fittings, to operate brakes, steering, clutch, transmission shifting, and suspension. Four enclosed columns of fluid topped by a chamber of compressed gas - one unit for each wheel - suspend the body. There are no metal springs. The system automatically adjusts the amount of fluid in each suspension unit to try to keep the car on an even keel during normal driving maneuvers. And it compensates for different loads and for changes in weight distribution as the car goes up and down hills, over uneven roads, or is braked.
The driver can control the car's height off the road by moving a lever under the instrument panel. There are five height settings; the car customarily rides at the second lowest one. Over a rutted road or in deep snow, you can raise the body for additional ground clearance, but that makes the ride harsh. Changing a tire is almost fun. You raise the car to its highest position and place a jack stand onto a stud on the car's side. Then when you lower the car height control the wheels on the propped side lift themselves into the air. The entire rear fender must be removed (an easier job than it sounds, involving removal of a single bolt) to change a rear wheel.
The Citroën is certainly unconventional-looking, with its shark-like nose and tapered body. Its rear wheels are eight inches closer together than its front wheels. It has no overhang to speak of in the rear and very little in the front. It also has the wheelbase of a typical full-sized U.S. Car - 123 inches. But in overall length and width, it's only the size of a typical U.S. compact, and its turning circle is even smaller than a compact's. It's rated to carry four passengers and their luggage. They have plenty of room in the plush front bucket seats and ample knee, hip and shoulder room in the back. While documenting the resale value of a Citroën is difficult since so few of them are sold in this country, it is our judgment that resale is likely to be difficult, and dollar depreciation rather high, because there are so few potential buyers for such an unusual and relatively expensive car. The Citroën sells in the high medium-priced bracket. Our top-of-the-line DS21 Pallas cost, fully equipped, about $5300. It was the most luxurious, highest-powered Citroën model available in 1969. There are other models ranging downwards in price to the basic DS19 which lists for about $3200 with no optional equipment. Discounts are not generally available.
As you may have gathered, the Citroën is an extremely complicated piece of machinery, both mechanically and hydraulically. And CU's 1969 Frequency-of-Repair records suggest that Citroëns are about as prone to mechanical difficulty as most cars. When something goes wrong, you're likely to get really hung up. In 1969, there were only about 125 Citroën dealers in the country, nearly half of them in either California or New York. Sixteen states had no dealers at all. If you owned a Citroën in Little Rock, Ark., for instanceQor broke down ther - your neighbourhood Citroën dealer would be 325 miles away, in Dallas.
And speaking of breakdowns, our Citroën chalked up an uncomplimentary total of 26 assembly defects and early failures. That's about average in number these days for a 1970 car, but the complexity of this car and the limited experience of our dealer prolonged the car's "down time." Many of the car's most spectacular early failures occurred in its unusual hydraulic system. We took to carrying an ample supply of Citroën's special "green blood" in our car's trunk, enabling us to give emergency transfusions. After three consecutive leak - one that sprayed green fluid on a front disk brake, one that oozed out under the car, and one in the transmission-shift line severe enough to drain the car of its life's blood and bring it to its knee - the system held up satisfactorily. But there were several air-conditioner failures, and the car was delivered to us with the windshield washer's electrical wiring disconnected and lying against the engine, with a badly mangled fender splash shield that rubbed against the front tire - and with the usual maladjusted tire pressures and headlights, body scratches and an exhaust leak.
Here are the details of our Citroën's showing in CU's battery of tests: Soon after we got the Citroën, we removed its front-seat head restraints. For most of our test staff, the front seats were simply not habitable with them in place. They were enormous and curved forward so that they tended to push one's head down upon the ches - very uncomfortable. Their bulk sharply restricted vision to the rear - to a hazardous extent, in our opinion. We understand that the factory has been working on an improved design for head restraints and that later Citroëns imported into this country may have more usable head restraints. We hope so.
With the head restraints removed, the Citroën truly cherishes its driver and passengers. The seats, of velvety jersey cloth, cradle their occupants softly but not too softly. We judged the seats very good overal - better than those we've found in any car for years. Citroën offers a $15 option for the driver's seat that allows you to raise or lower the front and rear of the seat separately. In addition, both front seat backs can be adjusted from almost straight up and down to fully reclined, where they fit flush with the rear-seat cushion (with the head restraints removed of course). The front seats travel almost six inches forward and backward. All that adjustability helps to make almost any driver comfortable. But because the wide engine compartment extends so far into the center of the front passenger compartment floor, the accelerator pedal is placed too far left, forcing the driver's right leg into an awkward position. A niche is carved out of this engine box to help make room for the foot, but it leaves little room to lift the toe of your shoe off the accelerator.
We judged access to both front and rear seats of the Citroën reasonably easy, but you must step over a high sill. There's no intrusive driveshaft tunnel on the rear floor, this being a front wheel drive car, so there's more flat space for feet and legs. A third passenger in the rear could be fairly comfortable except that there isn't enough shoulder room for three; Citroën has rated the car for only two adult passengers in the rear. All isn't perfect inside, however, despite the cushy seats. The Citroën's inside door handles are badly placed - too far forward on the doors. You don't get much leverage for opening or closing the doors, and when the front seat backs are reclined part way, they hide the rear door handles. Even worse, on our car, reclining the front passenger's seat caused its head restraint to strike the rear door latch release and open the door! The door locking system is overly complicated - and if you really try, you can lock yourself out of the car even with the key in your hand.
Lightly or fully loaded, the Citroën's ride was judged very good on CU's scale (only the lightly loaded Cadillac has been judged better than good in recent years). The Citroën had a few problems, though. It was a bit harsh crossing tar strips and other transverse ridges, its Michelin XH tires whined, and over a sharp drop in the road surface, the suspension reached the end of its travel with a jerk. Still and all, over most types of road, good and bad, just about all we felt were slow, gentle risings and fallings at one corner of the car or another. The character of the ride changed somewhat under full load (950 pounds for the Citroën), but was no worse. Fully loaded, the attitude of the car and its road clearance were unchanged. One problem: overnight our car would sink down to its lowest position. This could cause the underbody to rest on curbing or other obstructions or, if parallel parked, drop the bumpers so low that they offer no protection from damage by other cars. The DS21 chalked up another very good in handling during normal driving. The car went straight and steady down the road, it was unaffected by crosswinds, and it responded very quickly, precisely and predictably to steering maneuvers. But its power steering required moderately high effort when underway and was even harder to work in parking. And we were annoyed by the uneven, lumpy feel of the steering when we made small corrections. The DS21 handled less competently in emergency maneuvers at the test track than in normal driving. We found moderate understeer (not surprising in a car with two thirds of its weight in front) but the amount of understeer varied somewhat unpredictably. In high speed turns, the car didn't hold to the intended direction very we - both ends tended to slide outward, the front tires lost chunks of rubber from the outer edges of their tread, and the car yawed and rolled so much that everyone in it felt queasy. We judged the high-speed handling fair-to-good. The steel-belted radial-ply Michelin tires and the car's heavy front weight bias did provide traction in winter driving equivalent, we think, to that of most U.S. cars with snow tires. The Citroën's four-cylinder, premium fuel engine provided acceleration and fuel mileage roughly comparable to that of a Ford Maverick with its basic six cylinder engine. We judged acceleration reserve adequate. (In Europe, Citroën is now offering a fuel-injected version of this engine which, they claim, raises its horsepower significantly. Whether that engine will become available here we cannot say. ) We judged the Citroën engine fairly smooth. But in the front seat the booming sound characteristic of a four cylinder engine was quite obtrusive at turnpike speeds.
In the summer, at temperatures over 80!F, we noted an aggravating and potentially dangerous problem with our Citroën. The engine compartment is so packed with stuff that even with the air conditioner turned off, the underhood temperature became high enough to cause vapor lock in the fuel line. The resultant fuel starvation reduced attempts at quick acceleration to a series of spasmodic lunges - a real hazard should it happen when you needed extra power to merge with traffic or pass another vehicle.
Citroën owners would, in time, get used to the tricky semiautomatic shift but they're not likely to find it pleasant or convenient to use. When we discussed the Citroën in 1957, we concluded that a stick shift would be preferable to the semiautomatic. We still think so - and a stick shift is available for the DS21. The semiautomatic has a shift pattern so different from contemporary U.S. patterns that it may bother drivers who must switch from one car to another in a multi-car family. The detents - those notches that you feel when you've engaged a gear - are weak. Neutral is not marked on the selector diagram - you must learn to fish for it. Some shifts produced a loud "ping," and all shifts seemed slow to complete, especially so when the car was cold. Even with the engine idle speed correctly set, close quarter maneuvers, such as parallel parking, are difficult, because you're either at a dead stop or in a lurch forward or back (if you apply the brakes, the clutch disengages; release the brakes and you lurch). In a car as innovative as the Citroën, it seems strange not to have a modern, fully automatic transmission available.
The braking effect of the Citroën's rear wheels varies with the load in the car. The more load there is on the rear wheel - the more braking potential is delivered to them. This should prevent premature rear-wheel locking during minimum-distance stops. But on our test car this system overcompensated. The front disk brakes always locked first;we couldn't lock the rear drums no matter how much pedal effort we applied. Our shortest stopping distance with or without locking any wheels was 170 feet, an average figure for most conventional cars. Citroën claims that under light load the DS21 will stop in 152 feet from 60 mph without wheel locking. We could not attain that short a stop.
In other tests, the brakes performed well. Pedal effort was moderate, resistance to fade was fair-to-good, and recovery from fade quick. We judged the brakes good overall and found that the unusual brake "pedalS - a round rubber button on the floor, smaller than most American pedals and with a much shorter travel - was easy to get used to. But in very cold weather we experienced a delay in braking response - annoying, in our opinion, but not unsafe.
The Citroën's instrument panel bristles with a bemusing array of lights, knobs, buttons, stalks and levers. Many of them are similar to each other or identical in shape. Some are identified by mysterious symbols; others are not identified at all. If you have a better than-average memory, excellent coordination and three hands, the Citroën would pose no problems. But ordinary motorists should seek a thorough preflight checkout before attempting to solo in the Citroën.
Four stalks branch out from the steering column. They control the gearshift (the same stalk that changes gears also activates the starter ), the headlights, headlight high-low beams, directional signals (which must be cancelled manually), windshield wipers, windshield washers, and even the horn. In difficult driving condition - on a winding, hilly road in the rain, with traffic coming the other way, for instance - the driver fervently wishes for that third hand.
A switch and six levers control the heating and ventilating system. At high car speeds, face-level outlets provide welcome fresh air in the summer, once you've taken the course in how to work them. But at a standstill or in slow moving traffic, the driver's fresh-air outlet is almost worthless: the air that blows in has been nicely heated by its passage through a duct in the hot engine compartment. You'll want to open the windows. In heavy traffic, you will want to open them for another reason - that "fresh" air is taken in through openings low on the front of the car, where they can pick up the ground level exhaust from other traffic. (Those low intakes were abandoned years ago by almost all U.S. makes. ) In winter driving, we found the heater output is low. The fan has only one speed; in order to warm up the car's interior quickly, you must pull a chain under the dash which raises a window-shade blind in front of the radiator.
We purchased our DS21 with factory installed air conditioning. There are several different packages available: ours cost a whopping $550 plus $88 for the tinted glass and was identified as "number 3." Our advice: Don't buy it. The cold air discharged was some 10 to 15 degrees warmer than that of the U.S. factory-installed systems or even of some after-market "hang-on" units whose cooling capacity we've measured. Furthermore, the unit is mounted on the floor between the front passengers, where its airflow pattern is poor. It dripped and sprayed condensate into the passenger compartment; and the fan rubbed on its housing when the car made right turns.
The other Citroën air-conditioning units are mounted under the dash in a more conventional manner. They may perform better than ours did. As for safety: Citroën, of course, has certified that the DS21 meets currently required U.S. safety regulations. One excellent feature, not covered by current U.S. regulations, is a set of rear turn signals mounted on the roof above the rear window. Thus the signal of intent to turn is clearly differentiated from the taillights and braking signals. The fuel tank is located under the rear seat, separated from the car's interior by a metal panel, and is protected from most collision damage by the car's structure. In other areas, safety has taken a back seat. Driver vision to the rear is severely restricted with the head restraints in place. The inside mirror viewing angle is only 7.5 degrees instead of the minimum 20 degrees required by Federal standards. However, supplying two outside mirrors will comply with the standard. Our Citroën's outside mirrors were of little use. Mounted on the front doors, they fell out of adjustment every time the doors were slammedQthere was no way we could tighten them enough to hold. Vision forward was admirably wide and unobstructed. But the windshield wipers left wide unwiped areas in the upper corners of the windshield.
We couldn't keep the Citroën's three-point safety belts in any kind of order. They were in a constant tangle; the inboard ends of the front seat belts were forever disappearing into the crevice between the seats. The shoulder belts tended to slide off one's shoulder. When they were adjusted tightly enough to keep them on, their heavy buckles bore uncomfortably on the wearer's chest. And those buckles were inexcusably hard to adjust.
Conclusion: A nice car, but . . . The Citroën came through CU's tests so well that on the basis of test results alone one might conclude that this was indeed a car to be seriously considered. Its seating comfort and overall riding qualities are nearly in a class by themselves. Normal handling and braking are also good. But it's difficult to savor the plush seats and the beautifully insulated ride while fumbling with the awkward and enigmatic controls, modulating the manual choke, living with the weak heater and air-conditioning systems, spastically lunging in and out of tight parking places, shifting the transmission manually (it should be fully automatic) or listening to the engine booming and the tires whining on the highway. Those irritants are incompatible with the Citroën's reputation for luxurious qualitiesQand its high price. The Citroën is an extremely complicated piece of machinery, both mechanically and hydraulically. And we did encounter defects and early failures in our Citroën severe enough to put it out of commission for much of the first months we owned it. Most Citroëns, we think, will spend their fair share of time in the garage.
If you live in Los Angeles or New York City, or in a few other places where Citroën dealers are not unknown, you can probably get the car properly serviced or repaired, and you may even be able to get parts. Elsewhere, service and repair probably wouldn't be easy, resale would usually be difficult, and dollar depreciation would likely be high.
Originally published in Consumer Reports, March 1970, Volume 35, Number 3
The Citroën DS21 Pallas
An Automotive Anomaly
Late in 1956, CU tested one of the first front-wheel-drive Citroën DS sedans to come over from France. We remarked at the time: "To say that a car is new and different is only to say that it is interesting, not necessarily that it is good. ... The Citroën DSl9 is essentially a connoisseur's item." Thirteen years later, some 27,000 Citroëns having since crossed the Atlantic, we tested a 1969 DS21 Pallas sedan. (The 1970 Citroëns won't come on the U.S. market until spring.) It's not new (it differs only subtly from the 1956 car), but it's still interesting - as much an automotive anomaly as ever. Its major advantage - very comfortable seats, a very good ride, good handling in normal driving and good fuel econom - come at a fairly high price, at least in the model tested. And to judge by our test car, problems of repair and upkeep may constitute a major headache for Citroën owners.
Truly innovative engineering went into the Citroën's unique suspension system. It maintains level car height from light to full load and gives a good ride over almost all road surfaces. But the same engineering, after 13 years, still has not brought forth a fully automatic transmission, an automatic choke or even self-cancelling turn signals.
The heart of the Citroën's mechanical uniqueness as a machine is its hydraulic system. The engine drives a pump, which circulates, under pressure, a special green fluid through a hundred-odd feet of tubing, connections and fittings, to operate brakes, steering, clutch, transmission shifting, and suspension. Four enclosed columns of fluid topped by a chamber of compressed gas - one unit for each wheel - suspend the body. There are no metal springs. The system automatically adjusts the amount of fluid in each suspension unit to try to keep the car on an even keel during normal driving maneuvers. And it compensates for different loads and for changes in weight distribution as the car goes up and down hills, over uneven roads, or is braked.
The driver can control the car's height off the road by moving a lever under the instrument panel. There are five height settings; the car customarily rides at the second lowest one. Over a rutted road or in deep snow, you can raise the body for additional ground clearance, but that makes the ride harsh. Changing a tire is almost fun. You raise the car to its highest position and place a jack stand onto a stud on the car's side. Then when you lower the car height control the wheels on the propped side lift themselves into the air. The entire rear fender must be removed (an easier job than it sounds, involving removal of a single bolt) to change a rear wheel.
The Citroën is certainly unconventional-looking, with its shark-like nose and tapered body. Its rear wheels are eight inches closer together than its front wheels. It has no overhang to speak of in the rear and very little in the front. It also has the wheelbase of a typical full-sized U.S. Car - 123 inches. But in overall length and width, it's only the size of a typical U.S. compact, and its turning circle is even smaller than a compact's. It's rated to carry four passengers and their luggage. They have plenty of room in the plush front bucket seats and ample knee, hip and shoulder room in the back. While documenting the resale value of a Citroën is difficult since so few of them are sold in this country, it is our judgment that resale is likely to be difficult, and dollar depreciation rather high, because there are so few potential buyers for such an unusual and relatively expensive car. The Citroën sells in the high medium-priced bracket. Our top-of-the-line DS21 Pallas cost, fully equipped, about $5300. It was the most luxurious, highest-powered Citroën model available in 1969. There are other models ranging downwards in price to the basic DS19 which lists for about $3200 with no optional equipment. Discounts are not generally available.
As you may have gathered, the Citroën is an extremely complicated piece of machinery, both mechanically and hydraulically. And CU's 1969 Frequency-of-Repair records suggest that Citroëns are about as prone to mechanical difficulty as most cars. When something goes wrong, you're likely to get really hung up. In 1969, there were only about 125 Citroën dealers in the country, nearly half of them in either California or New York. Sixteen states had no dealers at all. If you owned a Citroën in Little Rock, Ark., for instanceQor broke down ther - your neighbourhood Citroën dealer would be 325 miles away, in Dallas.
And speaking of breakdowns, our Citroën chalked up an uncomplimentary total of 26 assembly defects and early failures. That's about average in number these days for a 1970 car, but the complexity of this car and the limited experience of our dealer prolonged the car's "down time." Many of the car's most spectacular early failures occurred in its unusual hydraulic system. We took to carrying an ample supply of Citroën's special "green blood" in our car's trunk, enabling us to give emergency transfusions. After three consecutive leak - one that sprayed green fluid on a front disk brake, one that oozed out under the car, and one in the transmission-shift line severe enough to drain the car of its life's blood and bring it to its knee - the system held up satisfactorily. But there were several air-conditioner failures, and the car was delivered to us with the windshield washer's electrical wiring disconnected and lying against the engine, with a badly mangled fender splash shield that rubbed against the front tire - and with the usual maladjusted tire pressures and headlights, body scratches and an exhaust leak.
Here are the details of our Citroën's showing in CU's battery of tests: Soon after we got the Citroën, we removed its front-seat head restraints. For most of our test staff, the front seats were simply not habitable with them in place. They were enormous and curved forward so that they tended to push one's head down upon the ches - very uncomfortable. Their bulk sharply restricted vision to the rear - to a hazardous extent, in our opinion. We understand that the factory has been working on an improved design for head restraints and that later Citroëns imported into this country may have more usable head restraints. We hope so.
With the head restraints removed, the Citroën truly cherishes its driver and passengers. The seats, of velvety jersey cloth, cradle their occupants softly but not too softly. We judged the seats very good overal - better than those we've found in any car for years. Citroën offers a $15 option for the driver's seat that allows you to raise or lower the front and rear of the seat separately. In addition, both front seat backs can be adjusted from almost straight up and down to fully reclined, where they fit flush with the rear-seat cushion (with the head restraints removed of course). The front seats travel almost six inches forward and backward. All that adjustability helps to make almost any driver comfortable. But because the wide engine compartment extends so far into the center of the front passenger compartment floor, the accelerator pedal is placed too far left, forcing the driver's right leg into an awkward position. A niche is carved out of this engine box to help make room for the foot, but it leaves little room to lift the toe of your shoe off the accelerator.
We judged access to both front and rear seats of the Citroën reasonably easy, but you must step over a high sill. There's no intrusive driveshaft tunnel on the rear floor, this being a front wheel drive car, so there's more flat space for feet and legs. A third passenger in the rear could be fairly comfortable except that there isn't enough shoulder room for three; Citroën has rated the car for only two adult passengers in the rear. All isn't perfect inside, however, despite the cushy seats. The Citroën's inside door handles are badly placed - too far forward on the doors. You don't get much leverage for opening or closing the doors, and when the front seat backs are reclined part way, they hide the rear door handles. Even worse, on our car, reclining the front passenger's seat caused its head restraint to strike the rear door latch release and open the door! The door locking system is overly complicated - and if you really try, you can lock yourself out of the car even with the key in your hand.
Lightly or fully loaded, the Citroën's ride was judged very good on CU's scale (only the lightly loaded Cadillac has been judged better than good in recent years). The Citroën had a few problems, though. It was a bit harsh crossing tar strips and other transverse ridges, its Michelin XH tires whined, and over a sharp drop in the road surface, the suspension reached the end of its travel with a jerk. Still and all, over most types of road, good and bad, just about all we felt were slow, gentle risings and fallings at one corner of the car or another. The character of the ride changed somewhat under full load (950 pounds for the Citroën), but was no worse. Fully loaded, the attitude of the car and its road clearance were unchanged. One problem: overnight our car would sink down to its lowest position. This could cause the underbody to rest on curbing or other obstructions or, if parallel parked, drop the bumpers so low that they offer no protection from damage by other cars. The DS21 chalked up another very good in handling during normal driving. The car went straight and steady down the road, it was unaffected by crosswinds, and it responded very quickly, precisely and predictably to steering maneuvers. But its power steering required moderately high effort when underway and was even harder to work in parking. And we were annoyed by the uneven, lumpy feel of the steering when we made small corrections. The DS21 handled less competently in emergency maneuvers at the test track than in normal driving. We found moderate understeer (not surprising in a car with two thirds of its weight in front) but the amount of understeer varied somewhat unpredictably. In high speed turns, the car didn't hold to the intended direction very we - both ends tended to slide outward, the front tires lost chunks of rubber from the outer edges of their tread, and the car yawed and rolled so much that everyone in it felt queasy. We judged the high-speed handling fair-to-good. The steel-belted radial-ply Michelin tires and the car's heavy front weight bias did provide traction in winter driving equivalent, we think, to that of most U.S. cars with snow tires. The Citroën's four-cylinder, premium fuel engine provided acceleration and fuel mileage roughly comparable to that of a Ford Maverick with its basic six cylinder engine. We judged acceleration reserve adequate. (In Europe, Citroën is now offering a fuel-injected version of this engine which, they claim, raises its horsepower significantly. Whether that engine will become available here we cannot say. ) We judged the Citroën engine fairly smooth. But in the front seat the booming sound characteristic of a four cylinder engine was quite obtrusive at turnpike speeds.
In the summer, at temperatures over 80!F, we noted an aggravating and potentially dangerous problem with our Citroën. The engine compartment is so packed with stuff that even with the air conditioner turned off, the underhood temperature became high enough to cause vapor lock in the fuel line. The resultant fuel starvation reduced attempts at quick acceleration to a series of spasmodic lunges - a real hazard should it happen when you needed extra power to merge with traffic or pass another vehicle.
Citroën owners would, in time, get used to the tricky semiautomatic shift but they're not likely to find it pleasant or convenient to use. When we discussed the Citroën in 1957, we concluded that a stick shift would be preferable to the semiautomatic. We still think so - and a stick shift is available for the DS21. The semiautomatic has a shift pattern so different from contemporary U.S. patterns that it may bother drivers who must switch from one car to another in a multi-car family. The detents - those notches that you feel when you've engaged a gear - are weak. Neutral is not marked on the selector diagram - you must learn to fish for it. Some shifts produced a loud "ping," and all shifts seemed slow to complete, especially so when the car was cold. Even with the engine idle speed correctly set, close quarter maneuvers, such as parallel parking, are difficult, because you're either at a dead stop or in a lurch forward or back (if you apply the brakes, the clutch disengages; release the brakes and you lurch). In a car as innovative as the Citroën, it seems strange not to have a modern, fully automatic transmission available.
The braking effect of the Citroën's rear wheels varies with the load in the car. The more load there is on the rear wheel - the more braking potential is delivered to them. This should prevent premature rear-wheel locking during minimum-distance stops. But on our test car this system overcompensated. The front disk brakes always locked first;we couldn't lock the rear drums no matter how much pedal effort we applied. Our shortest stopping distance with or without locking any wheels was 170 feet, an average figure for most conventional cars. Citroën claims that under light load the DS21 will stop in 152 feet from 60 mph without wheel locking. We could not attain that short a stop.
In other tests, the brakes performed well. Pedal effort was moderate, resistance to fade was fair-to-good, and recovery from fade quick. We judged the brakes good overall and found that the unusual brake "pedalS - a round rubber button on the floor, smaller than most American pedals and with a much shorter travel - was easy to get used to. But in very cold weather we experienced a delay in braking response - annoying, in our opinion, but not unsafe.
The Citroën's instrument panel bristles with a bemusing array of lights, knobs, buttons, stalks and levers. Many of them are similar to each other or identical in shape. Some are identified by mysterious symbols; others are not identified at all. If you have a better than-average memory, excellent coordination and three hands, the Citroën would pose no problems. But ordinary motorists should seek a thorough preflight checkout before attempting to solo in the Citroën.
Four stalks branch out from the steering column. They control the gearshift (the same stalk that changes gears also activates the starter ), the headlights, headlight high-low beams, directional signals (which must be cancelled manually), windshield wipers, windshield washers, and even the horn. In difficult driving condition - on a winding, hilly road in the rain, with traffic coming the other way, for instance - the driver fervently wishes for that third hand.
A switch and six levers control the heating and ventilating system. At high car speeds, face-level outlets provide welcome fresh air in the summer, once you've taken the course in how to work them. But at a standstill or in slow moving traffic, the driver's fresh-air outlet is almost worthless: the air that blows in has been nicely heated by its passage through a duct in the hot engine compartment. You'll want to open the windows. In heavy traffic, you will want to open them for another reason - that "fresh" air is taken in through openings low on the front of the car, where they can pick up the ground level exhaust from other traffic. (Those low intakes were abandoned years ago by almost all U.S. makes. ) In winter driving, we found the heater output is low. The fan has only one speed; in order to warm up the car's interior quickly, you must pull a chain under the dash which raises a window-shade blind in front of the radiator.
We purchased our DS21 with factory installed air conditioning. There are several different packages available: ours cost a whopping $550 plus $88 for the tinted glass and was identified as "number 3." Our advice: Don't buy it. The cold air discharged was some 10 to 15 degrees warmer than that of the U.S. factory-installed systems or even of some after-market "hang-on" units whose cooling capacity we've measured. Furthermore, the unit is mounted on the floor between the front passengers, where its airflow pattern is poor. It dripped and sprayed condensate into the passenger compartment; and the fan rubbed on its housing when the car made right turns.
The other Citroën air-conditioning units are mounted under the dash in a more conventional manner. They may perform better than ours did. As for safety: Citroën, of course, has certified that the DS21 meets currently required U.S. safety regulations. One excellent feature, not covered by current U.S. regulations, is a set of rear turn signals mounted on the roof above the rear window. Thus the signal of intent to turn is clearly differentiated from the taillights and braking signals. The fuel tank is located under the rear seat, separated from the car's interior by a metal panel, and is protected from most collision damage by the car's structure. In other areas, safety has taken a back seat. Driver vision to the rear is severely restricted with the head restraints in place. The inside mirror viewing angle is only 7.5 degrees instead of the minimum 20 degrees required by Federal standards. However, supplying two outside mirrors will comply with the standard. Our Citroën's outside mirrors were of little use. Mounted on the front doors, they fell out of adjustment every time the doors were slammedQthere was no way we could tighten them enough to hold. Vision forward was admirably wide and unobstructed. But the windshield wipers left wide unwiped areas in the upper corners of the windshield.
We couldn't keep the Citroën's three-point safety belts in any kind of order. They were in a constant tangle; the inboard ends of the front seat belts were forever disappearing into the crevice between the seats. The shoulder belts tended to slide off one's shoulder. When they were adjusted tightly enough to keep them on, their heavy buckles bore uncomfortably on the wearer's chest. And those buckles were inexcusably hard to adjust.
Conclusion: A nice car, but . . . The Citroën came through CU's tests so well that on the basis of test results alone one might conclude that this was indeed a car to be seriously considered. Its seating comfort and overall riding qualities are nearly in a class by themselves. Normal handling and braking are also good. But it's difficult to savor the plush seats and the beautifully insulated ride while fumbling with the awkward and enigmatic controls, modulating the manual choke, living with the weak heater and air-conditioning systems, spastically lunging in and out of tight parking places, shifting the transmission manually (it should be fully automatic) or listening to the engine booming and the tires whining on the highway. Those irritants are incompatible with the Citroën's reputation for luxurious qualitiesQand its high price. The Citroën is an extremely complicated piece of machinery, both mechanically and hydraulically. And we did encounter defects and early failures in our Citroën severe enough to put it out of commission for much of the first months we owned it. Most Citroëns, we think, will spend their fair share of time in the garage.
If you live in Los Angeles or New York City, or in a few other places where Citroën dealers are not unknown, you can probably get the car properly serviced or repaired, and you may even be able to get parts. Elsewhere, service and repair probably wouldn't be easy, resale would usually be difficult, and dollar depreciation would likely be high.