There's nothing wrong with mainstream cars. Their popularity is based in reason, whether they're undeniably good or overwhelmingly practical. Other cars, however, can develop stigmas about ease of ownership. Some are genuine, some are genuinely misunderstood. Looking from afar, this can be the case for French cars and Citroëns in particular.

With restored Citroën DS prices in the ballpark of a Porsche 912 or Alfa Romeo GTV, and offering such a wildly different and eccentric motoring experience compared to other classics in this price range we thought it best to breakdown any 'stereotypes' about owning one.

Here to demystify CItroën ownership is Jeff Suhy, long-time enthusiast and collector. After owning everything from the Citroën SM to the Mehari, he's landed upon his Citroën DS21 and DS21 Décapotable Henri Chapron tribute. What might appear to be a duplicate two-car solution is actually an interesting moment in time, as Jeff ended up recently parting ways with the Coupe on Bring-a-Trailer after seven years of ownership.

Marqued:  Citroën is sometimes perceived as an oddball car and not always known for being easy to own. Why Citroën, why the DS, and why two? 

Jeff: Well, I've always been a little bit of an anti-establishment kind of person, and I'm sure that the Citroën DS is the classic car manifestation of my personality on that level. I went to a Citroën Car Club meeting a few years ago and took portraits of each person at the meeting. I was in my late forties at the time, and I was by far the youngest person out of forty people at the meeting! I actually thought that was cool. There was very little youth enthusiasm around Citroën at the time, and that's changed a little bit over the last few years. People are discovering this car, and that's exciting and fun.

I like the weirder things, whether it be in the music world where I come from or design. I just gravitate towards the odd, but also towards things that are really well thought out.

Photographed by Shayan Bokaie in Los Angeles, California

It was in the fifties when it came out, and it was the height of industrial design. There was nothing like it. It blew everybody's mind. They sold a ton of them. The innovation with the hydraulics, the shape of the car, the low center of gravity, the front-mid engine, the front-wheel drive, the inboard brakes, and self-leveling, just on and on and on!  It's the coolest thing. 

It was all done without computers: it was all done mechanically and really engineered to an insane degree. That's very appealing to me. I love the design engineering. I like working on it. I've learned how to work on cars, on Citroëns.

I've always been pretty hands-on, built stuff and this car definitely requires some hands-on thinking and energy. You've got to be active with it.

Marqued: It's certainly a unique car to have fallen in love for a multitude of reasons, and it's great that you've really driven it. Family road trips and some big adventures? 

Jeff: Oh yeah. I've piled the kids in the car and taken them from Los Angeles to the Canadian border in the middle of summer, no air conditioning, no radio. Family bonding in its most extreme, like, a "What the hell are we doing, dad?" kind of trip. It's funny how everybody loves this car as a by-product of those family adventures. 

Marqued: You could consider the DS21 a 'luxury GT' car in some respects, so long trips like that are what the car was built to do, right?

Jeff: That's right. The suspension was designed for bad roads like the cobblestone roads in that part of the world. They were trying to figure out a way to make driving comfortable on the crappy roads of France at the time.

Marqued: So that must make it especially smooth on our modern roads. How did you end up with this car? 

Jeff: The first attraction was to the Citroën SM, which had the Maserati motor. I first saw it in a movie; Burt Reynolds steals this girl's SM and runs from the cops and dumps it in a bay, and during the whole scene, I remember thinking, "What is that car?" I'd never seen something like that before. It was so cool, and it just stuck with me. 

I bought it totally ignorant of what I was really getting into. This is 1991, I think, so I  proceeded then to basically rebuild the entire car because it was butchered by a bad mechanic back in the day here in LA. 

I had to rebuild it from scratch and learn all about it. It was a great challenge. There's a place called SM World here in LA run by Jerry Hathaway, who is world-famous for his work on the SM. He taught me a lot about the car, and ever since then, I've just been obsessed and have this secret Citroën knowledge about how to work on them, all learned through painful experiences, so I kept buying Citroëns and restoring them, and have been having fun with them ever since. 

Photographed by Shayan Bokaie in Los Angeles, California

Marqued: The Convertible DS has serious presence. Could you describe the difference in driving experience compared to the coupe? Do you have a preference?

Jeff: Unlike a lot of American convertibles of the era, this feels very solid and stable, just like the hardtop. You do get a similar experience as the coupe, but with a top-free vibe. I think the hardtop is such a unique shape, and I love the high turn signals and the trumpet-like elements on the back. Some people think the hardtop is the most beautiful car ever made. Other people have said, "Well, that's pretty close, but the most beautiful car ever made is the convertible version of that!"

It looks pretty remarkable, so it's hard for me. I like both. Some days I'll look at the hardtop and go, "There's nothing that can beat that." Then you get behind the wheel of the convertible and drive that thing around, and it's just amazing. It's beautiful, and it's such a smooth ride. It's not a very powerful car, so you're not racing around or anything, but it's a phenomenal cruiser. 

Marqued: Do they offer any performance driving spirit at all? Or is it just pure luxury?

Jeff: Well, they used to rally them. They did convert some into rally cars, so it's doable. Because of the hydraulic suspension, they generally just have a much more compliant suspension.

I'm sure the Porsche people were having a better time driving at the limit than I am. Mine doesn't like that very much. It can do it, but it doesn’t like it!

Marqued: They may not look as cool, though! We've heard that Citroën folks are like a tribe, helping each other at the enthusiast level. Has this been your experience?

Jeff: Yeah. We all know each other now and are connected. When anyone has a problem, they run it up the flagpole and whoever's dealt with it throws in, "Oh, here's how you deal with that one." We all get through it as a collective. But luckily these cars, like I said,  they're actually really reliable, so the goal is to get each one of these cars sorted so we don't have to do too much with them over time. 

Marqued: Since the Citroën world is such a tight-knit community, that’s got to be a benefit to an enthusiast looking to get into these cars. Do you have any advice for someone who wants to buy a Citroën, or maybe has one now and doesn’t know what to do with it yet?

Jeff: I would say there's some pretty active online communities around this car and around Citroëns in general. One of them is a site called Aussiefrogs. There's hundreds of posts in there a day and all kinds of topics. You can search through the past 10 years and find pretty much anything you want to know, and there are some real expert mechanics, and people who’ve worked on these cars for 50 years in there. Whatever you run into, you have a lot of support within the community on these various services. 

Beyond the online community, you'll meet people who are local. There are little Citroën get-togethers, and the Citroën Club, and things like that. Plus, the parts availability is impressive. You can pretty much get any part for a DS. They remake everything, and nowadays, they're remaking things even better than the original in many cases. 

I've had other cars where it was really difficult to get parts and it made it not much fun to have the car because you couldn't fix it; you'd have to find a used part or wait for something to come up on eBay. With the Citroëns, there are people who can get you a part in a day or two from Europe, so it's really easy to work on your car because you can actually get parts. 

Marqued: So, it's not as intimidating as someone might think because most people think that Citroëns must be so complex that they could never be an entry-level classic. Price-wise, the DS isn’t that far from something like an Alfa GTV, in a lot of cases, so you could have a totally different experience for the same money and effort. 

Jeff: Yeah... the reason they're intimidating is because when you first pop the hood, you have this engine up against the firewall with a transmission in front of it, and a spare tire in there, and these green spheres that look like they're some kind of spaceship. Nothing looks like it came out of a normal car, so you first look at it and you're like, "Oh my God, I don't even want to know what this is." Once you look at each part and you realize what it does, you realize, “Oh, that's just a different way of doing the thing that the other thing I'm familiar with does.” Then you understand the interrelationship of all those things, which you just figure out over time. It’s not intimidating at all. It's actually so much easier to work on than other cars I've had. 

Marqued: Would you consider yourself as a resource? If somebody was trying to get into this game, would you encourage them to talk to you about ownership, just hitting you up on Instagram or whatever.

Jeff: Yeah. People always do, and I'm happy to talk to people about the car. "Hey, I want to buy one of these. What should I do? How do I do it? Am I an idiot for thinking I could drive this every day?" and all those sorts of things. 

I do my posting on Instagram, always showing people I'm out in these crazy places with the car, and hopefully, I've helped a little bit and people are going, "Yeah, I can drive it out to Death Valley or I could drive it to Oregon or wherever I want to go." It's a totally viable and comfortable car to drive. 

Marqued: Do you think there's anything else that would be interesting or influential for somebody who’s trying to get into the Citroën life? 

Jeff: Yeah, I think it's just to do it right. There are ways to cut corners with this car and this car will punish you for cutting corners. I think that's probably the number one thing I tell people. For example, just get the original Michelin XAS tires for the car. People don't want to spend the extra 100 bucks for the right tire. But the car was designed with one specific tire. It’s almost like a motorcycle tire, a rounded-tread tire. It’s designed that way to work with the suspension, which was designed in such a way that it needs that sort of compliance from the tire. That’s just an example to show that all these systems are related. 

If you cheap out on one thing like tires, that will affect the way the car drives, that will affect the way the suspension works, and it will end up doing things that are not good for your suspension.

Marqued: Thank you so much for taking the time, Jeff.

More about Jeff Suhy

Jeff's Citroën exploits are worth a follow in his Instagram (@pynhead), where you can get in touch with him as well.