Citroën Traction Avant

Andre Citroën was known to many as the Henry Ford of France. Much of this is based on the fact that he was very fond of some of Henry Ford's production methods. He was also the first in Europe to use a variation of Ford's mass production assembly line system in his plant.

In fact, one of the things that Andre Citroën did best was to recognize systems and features that other car companies had and employ them in a mass produced car.

The Citroën Traction Avant was such a model. Although Andre Citroën did not invent all of the features, he was the first to bring together most of these features into a mass produced vehicle.

Lets begin with the most noted one... front wheel drive. Here Maybach and Cord had used this on their vehicles, but they were very limited production and nearly hand assembled cars. Citroën made 750,000 of the Traction Avants from 1934 to 1957, so it was by no means a limited edition. Today a very large portion of vehicles made employ front wheel drive.

The next would be the use of a unitized or Monocoque arc-welded body. While visiting Henry Ford in the late 1920s, both Ford and Citroën visited the Budd body works in Philidelphia, PA. There they saw Budd's mock up of a unitized or monocoque body.   Both men could see that it was a far lighter, yet stronger, unit than the body onto a frame method that was being used by all manufacturers at the time. Citroën decided to take the idea and use it in the Traction Avant. Ford, on the other hand, decided to make a vehicle look a bit like the one in the mock up, but with a frame. It was not until the late 1950s that Ford joined into using unitized bodies on their cars. Today, pretty much, trucks and stretch limos are the only vehicles not employing unitized bodies in their manufacture.

The next feature that Citroën saw some manufactures using on a limited bases was rack and pinion steering. Here he was way ahead of the crowd with this feature. The combination of the Traction Avant's front wheel drive and rack and pinion steering gave it that "riding on rails" feeling it was so noted for. Once again a feature found on most cars today.

Another feature which must be mentioned that Citroën employed on the Traction Avant was torsion bar suspension. This feature also contibuted to its excellent handling. Chrysler in the 1950's and 60's made this feature famous on their cars with excellent large car handling.

While most manufactures were using flat head or side valve engine designs, Citroën saw the value of the extra power per cubic liter offered by the use of over-head valves in his engines. Today there is no other valve arrangement in Otto or Diesel design engines.
Citroen had to make a huge initial investment to make to bring out the Traction Avant in 1934, as the world was still hurting from the great depression. His company could not meet it's bills and was forced into bankruptcy. Citroën passed away in 1935, but the Michelin Tire Company, Citroën's biggest creditor, took over operations of the company. Michelin continued letting Citroën lead with their engineering arm and used them as a test bed for many of their new tire and rubber ideas.

In 1948 Citroën used the Traction Avant to introduce the radial tire to the world. Once again, have you seen anything else on a car or truck today?             

Check out more articles and photos of the Citroen TAV at:   Citbitz.com