Thread: The Citroen DS

In the early 1970s there was a DS featured in a TV ad in France. It was driven over a spike to blow one front tyre, and then immediately given a crash stop, which it managed in an almost straight line - with the driver's hands off the steering wheel. Try that with any other car.

I have on one occasion destroyed a rear tyre because I did not notice it was flat, as the handling was unchanged.

Another interesting point. As I found when a woman drove her Fairlane through a stop sign into the side of mine, the allowable chassis alignment accuracy was less than a millimetre, and was beyond the capabilities of almost all available chassis jigs. All suspension arms are attached to the chassis via tapered roller bearings, with no rubber at all used anywhere. This makes them noisy, but explains a lot of the handling, and also exceptionally good tyre life.

John

Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

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They were quite low powered in there time, the reason they won those brutal rallies is they were among the very few cars to actually manage to finish.

seeya,
Shane L.

I don't think that was the only reason, although it certainly helped, but the suspension enabled them to travel much faster than anything else on very rough roads, and the handling enabled the speed to be maintained round corners, plus the brakes being better than anything else on the road meant you could leave braking till later. And the low drag meant you did not need the power for high speed anyway. In 1964 I drove my brother's ID19 wagon (69HP from memory) the 315 miles from Brisbane to Roma in under four hours, and that included Ipswich Rd and going through Toowoomba. (Who needs more power?) I was young and foolish then.

John