The 1955 Citroën DS Still Feels Ahead of Its Time

(upbeat music)

Citroen designers don't care about

what other people think cars should look like,

they have the confidence they can build cars

that are beautiful or elegant, practical and comfortable,

and in 1955, this was the result, the Citroen DS.

Now, imagine the world in '55.

This was the very beginning of the space race,

so when this car was unveiled at the Paris Auto Show,

it really caught people's attentions,

partly because it looks like a spaceship,

especially compared to everything else

that was on the road around then,

and some of the technology that it has onboard is still

more cutting edge than we see in cars today.

(upbeat music)

[Voiceover] For what some call the ultimate vintage car,

the DS was awfully advanced.

The headlights swivel to highlight the road.

It came with hydropneumatic suspension,

a revolution replacing mechanical springs with

a pressurized fluid for a super smooth ride on

France's pothole packed post-war roads.

And it still works on America's rough roads today.

So it has this strange semiautomatic gearbox

that you have to get used to,

and that's just the thing with Citroens.

They're unforgiving if you don't know what you're doing,

so you really have to learn how to drive these cars.

They are not something you can just jump into.

Now, one of the cool features of this suspension was,

and this car didn't come with a jack.

If you got a flat tire, you just pump it up

as high as you can like it is right now,

and then put a pole that it came with underneath,

and then just lower the suspension down again,

and the wheel where you'd left the pole would stay

with that side of the car propped up in the air.

You could just swap the wheel out, put your spare on,

and be ready to go.

[Voiceover] The name in French, Citroen's home country,

is pronounced DAY - ES, which means goddess.

The DS was built from 1955 to 1975,

but it never sold very well in the US.

It was designed for an austere European market

that taxed big wasteful engines.

In 1970, Citroen launched the SM.

It was much more of a driver's car with

a proper V6 design by Maserati, which Citroen briefly owned.

And what that makes that so special is

that this car was released 15 years after the DS.

Things haven't really changed technology-wise.

It still uses that same hydropneumatic suspension,

the same little mushroom button on the floor for the braking

and yet it still feels revolutionary.

[Voiceover] You can see the same design influences,

the aerodynamic shape, the swiveling headlights,

the all-encompassing hydraulic system,

but of course the world had moved on from the mid fifties.

The SM came just after Concord's first flight,

a join French British project,

and another vision of the future

which seems to have influenced Citroen's designers.

These cars are part of a new Citroen exhibition at

the Mullen Automotive Museum north of Los Angeles.

46 of them in total will showcase

the brand through the years.

Today, the French manufacturer is going on 100 years old,

and is part of the huge PSA Peugeot Citroen group.

It has had to get a bit more mainstream to survive,

but its designers still love a bit of gallic quirk

using the European auto shows to demonstrate

some truly original ideas

and also just a hint of that original DS charm.