The First Vehicles (1918-1924)The First Vehicles (1918-1924)
There was nothing very startling about the mechanical design of the car
- but what shook the motoring public to its core was Citroën's ruthless
exploitation of the laws of mass production. Adding extras was cheaper than
the complications of providing different options, so electric lighting and
an electric self-starter were provided along with a soft top, the aforementioned
spare wheel and a host of other items at no extra charge - all for a projected
7250 francs list price. Yet so clever was the body design in allowing for
modifications without interrupting production that buyers were still offered
the choice of no less than five body styles: three- and four-seater open
tourers, a three-seater sedan, a coupe de ville or a light delivery van.
Citroën set up production in record time. He needed to, to sell enough
cars to show a profit at his deliberately rock-bottom price. Within a year,
production was moving in earnest - yet so attractive was the Type A package
that 16,000 orders arrived within a fortnight of the announcement, and the
target figure of 30,000 orders had been reached long before the first production
cars were wheeled out of the plant. Things were happening a bit too quickly,
as André was soon to find out.
In addition to initial financial hurdles - Citroën had even desperately
suggested partnership to Henry Ford but was turned down - there were production
teething problems. Cars were infinitely more complex than gearwheels and
munitions, and this new design was a very different proposition from the
already well-proven products Citroën had been dealing with at the Mors
works. Originally setting himself a target of a hundred cars a day, he finally
settled for thirty, a figure still way beyond the capacity of most of his
competitors. And as a result the price climbed to 12,500 francs - even at
this level a definite bargain. Some 25,000 Type A's were built and bought
before an improved version, the Type B 2 - with a slightly bored out engine
using 68 mm cylinders producing another two horsepower over the A and adding
another four miles an hour to maximum speed and with new bodywork - emerged
from the Citroën factory. By this time André Citroën's
unique genius for publicity - the launch of the Type A had been preceded
by weeks of carefully deliberate rumour mongering - and the benefits of
mass production he was so scrupulously passing on to his customers were
bringing in floods of new orders every day. The sign of the double chevron
- Citroën's badge from the earliest days, a stylized picture of a double
helical gear-tooth and carried by every Citroën ever since - was in
the ascendant. By 1922 the works had managed to surpass his earlier target
in turning out more than 300 cars a day, and nearly 100,000 B 2's were sold
in just five years.
Already André Citroën had learned a lot about mass production
- and one lesson he, and his company, was never to forget was that it was
far easier (and cheaper) to add detail improvements to existing, well-proven
designs than to introduce totally new models for no very good reason. So
the B series lasted for five full years: it included the B 10 with a new
type of all-steel monocoque body which ran into production problems as it
took two and a half times more work to finish than the original wood-frame
version. Even then, the steel body mated badly with the flexible. Eventually
these considerations led to the wider and longer and more successful B 12,
with four-wheel brakes, improved rear suspension with two friction shock
absorbers, and a production total of 40,000 in its own right.
Yet new designs did emerge from time to time. As early as 1921, the Citroën
Type C made its first appearance. As the B series had begun the inevitable
trend towards bigger, heavier and more powerful cars, this was a return
to simplicity with a vengeance: a tiny 856 cc 11 bhp engine squeezed into
a light two-seater capable of 40 mph with a slight following breeze. In
the following year, a three-seater sports version of the B 2, with a boat-shaped
body, was introduced. This was called the Caddy, and in its attack on the
specialist sports car market was less successful than the solid, bread-and-butter
sedans and tourers of the rest of the range. It was dropped in less than
twelve months, but not before the little C had been fitted with a similar
body, to make the C 3 Cloverleaf. This was the kind of car of which legends
are made. It looked pretty, it had a character all its own, and while it
may have lacked exciting performance, it was still tough and reliable in
an undeniably stylish way. And although still highly prized by collectors,
the Cloverleaf, like the rest of the small-engined C range, was killed by
the company's own success. So sophisticated had Citroën's production
become that it could turn out the big B series cars for little more than
the C's, and the demand and eventual profit was much greater. So by 1925
the little C's had vanished into the mists of history.
