(first posted 6/12/2015) Southfield was the headquarter of AMC when it existed, and there are still few AMCs running around here, including a Gremlin owned by a campus security guy. There are also few French Renault Alliances too, like a convertible I saw running on I-75 last year. But today I happened to see another French car, and this one happens to be Citroën DS convertible! And it’s a well-used genuine curbside classic, not a pristine car-show queen. Fortunately I happened to bring my camera with me today, so that I can prove this unusual encounter was for real.
There’s more than a bit of rust on this goddess, which seems a bit of a sacrilege.
According to Paul, this is what was called a DS 21 Cabrio d’Usine (factory body), which despite its name, was built by Henri Chapron’s bodyworks, but sold by regular Citroen dealers as a factory-listed car. Only 1365 of these were ever built, between 1958 and 1973.
I still feel the black round rear seat loudspeaker doesn’t look quite original or natural in this environment. Aftermarket?
The DS comes with a flat floor and reinforced side members/sills to keep it from sagging. The exhaust inevitably has to hang low.
Looks like this car took part in Automobile Magazine’s tenth anniversary Perfect Ten Celebration Tour in 1996. A little Googling only brings up one article on it. It was a 1000 mile, four day tour of Lake Michigan. Thirty eight cars participated. All the automotive entrants had to be built before 1968, so this DS obviously dates from before then. And obviously, this DS has not seen much attention since then, but I am glad the owner still puts it away during salt season.
Wow, I had no idea that these were ever made! I am certain that I have never seen one. What a treat. It looks to be another of those convertibles (like the early Continental) where the rear passengers got to look at nothing but fabric and a metal frame when the top was up. If there was any car that ever needed backup cameras, it would be those ragtops with the huge blind quarters.
Apparently you missed this one a couple of months ago: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-global-outtakes-citroen-ds-cabrio-and-sedan-lorraine-spotted-together-a-chapron-convention/
I did indeed – must have been a busy day. Too much great stuff here! Miss a day and you pay for it later. 🙂
A couple of weeks ago, I saw a pristine DS21 convertible parked off the street in Munich, which attracted lot of admirers. I even emailed the images to Curbside Classic, but nothing came out of it…
Have I done anything wrong?
You did nothing wrong. But we had just shown one like that fairly recently: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/cc-global-outtakes-citroen-ds-cabrio-and-sedan-lorraine-spotted-together-a-chapron-convention/
And this was written up by a Contributor; I just don’t have time to write up all the cars posted at the Cohort and/or e-mailed to me. And for what it’s worth, this is a “genuine CC”, meaning with lots of patina and signs of regular use. All things being equal, I do rather prefer that. 🙂
if you want to become a Contributor and create posts of your finds, do let me know.
When I was young, I thought these were the most hideous looking cars ever made, but with time; I have come to appreciate their beauty. I also never noticed how much these may have been influenced by the 1953 Studebaker, despite having loved the ’53 Studey since I first saw it.
No they are ugly, however $ 150000 ugly really, if you can buy this tatty one for $ 40000 you´d still make a profit with a real ´ Factory Convertible ´
They’re either buying liquor or getting their hair done. Both are risky propositions in a Citroen convertible.
Well, at least it’s a natural hair salon.
The Citroen might very well be the salon’s hair dryer.
What a fantastic find! Love the DS, and I’ve seen a few of the sedans over the years, but never a cabriolet. And with less than 1400 produced worldwide, probably less than half of those imported to North America, how many can be left? Just amazing! And while rust probably ought to be dealt with, I do enjoy the fact that this car is clearly a driver and not an over-restored show car. Tons of character!
Looking at the interior, I get the impression of narrowness–looks more like it’s fit for two across rather than three. Are all of the DS variants so narrow or is that particular to the convertible, I wonder? Or were French people just really skinny in the 50’s and 60’s?
Also the owner of that salon might exude a greater degree of excellence if they spelled “Locks” right!
Same basic body. Yes, most Europeans were quite thin back then.
Nice car ! .
The bottom doesn’t appear to have much rust at all .
I doubt I’ll ever own one of these Citroens , not even a Sedan but I had a Mechanic working in my Shop in the 1970’s who did and he loved it , took me for spirited rides and I was very impressed with it .
-Nate
I saw one of these, in great shape, in London in 1991. I also saw a Peugeot 504 pickup truck (yes, they made them, if not for the US market) on that trip.
I’m normally not a big fan of convertibles, but this one looks pretty nice. I definitely like it better than the sedan. I can see myself enjoying this one without worrying about it getting scratched or chipped!
I am required to post this image (Jane Birkin)…
Indeed you are. Legal requirement
not sure who jane birkin is but google is only a few clicks away …….
…….. and now i know
quite a busy life.
It is quite extraordinary, and rather refreshing, to see a Chapron convertible in that sort of condition.
A contrast to the type of car pictured below, and I’d practically kill to cruise around in either. (When I saw this earlier this year, the owner wasn’t around, so I couldn’t ask who did this conversion.)
Front …
Oh, now that’s nice too. Maybe a little less graceful than the Chapron, but absolutely one of a kind. Plus I love any 4-door convertible!
Three points.
1) I’m surprised our featured car doesn’t have the high, chevron-shaped turn signals seen in OliverTwist’s picture. Were they eliminated and their functions combined with the brakelights on US-spec cars?
2) For that matter, is this a US-spec car? Given how few DS décapotables were built, I assumed Citroën never exported the model beyond Europe at all.
3) I remember reading about the 1996 Perfect Ten Celebration Tour in Automobile back in the day: It sounded like a heck of a fun excursion, and I wished that I could have been part of it (or part of a follow-up event). I was disappointed that the magazine never coordinated another road tour like it again.
These DS Cabriolets are worth absurd amounts of money. Even this condition 4 car is worth many tens of thousands of dollars and merits a six figure restoration. I’d have made the owner an offer.
Reutter from Germany built 7 of these four-door convertibles.
This is today’s Citroën DS Cabriolet. Not quite the same….
Still quite appealing though. A DS3 is on my list for the next Carr car
Certainly. Although I will never own a convertible or something with a roof construction like the DS3 Cabrio above. 100% sure.
I like the “regular” DS3 though, something that stands out in the B-segment crowd. I’m looking forward to your DS3 article.
What a find! To see any DS in North America, let alone a Chapron cabriolet, is quite unusual although I suspect they might be a little more common in Quebec.
Here’s mine. It’s in much better condition, but a bit smaller (1/18th scale) LOL!
The only sort of DS many of us will ever own!
I have a 1/16 scale Heller DS19 kit – must finish it one day.
Very true, Pete. I have the same kit, untouched.
Is it really six years later? I still haven’t finished it!
These cars always looked a little odd (even for a DS) with the rear wheels so far back on the body – it’s particularly apparent on a two-door. I’ve never seen a convertible DS so this featured car is something of a treat. I like the little lights on the pictured that OliverTwist posted.
Got to wonder what’s the value of the DS convertible as in Southfield.
Great find on a wonderful car, and if it is true Chapron version (Paul is correct on that) then there must be a back story too.
The turn signal for US market Chapron cars were in rear bumper, and the car should probably have a length wise chrome strip at wheel hub height
http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/michelin/ds/chapron/usine/usine.html
Wonderful though they are, they look much better with the roof folded down.
What do you mean “if it is (a) true Chapron version”? Only Chapron built these; the Citroen factory never built any DS convertibles.
Nice find! There was a crowd who, late last century, would take a DS/ID Safari and build a replica decap body. I believe this was in the UK and I saw one of their efforts in Sydney. The whole aft section was one great glass moulding. I cannot find any reference to the builder right now.
By true Chapron, I mean not an aftermarket cut and shu
Been a fan of these since the 60s.We got the DS saloon and safari estate in the UK but no convertible.They were all LHD and living in a country you need an overcoat and gloves most of the time would mean few takers.
Conservative MP Alan Clark showed me a picture of his when I met him on an animal rights demonstration.He was quite a character, a great classic car fan and had quite a collection at his castle, a string of mistresses and a wife with the patience of a saint.
I think I met the owner of this car, don’t know his name, I followed him into a gas station in Plymouth Mi and asked him about the D S four door he was driving, he told me he had something like 30 or 40 of these ars in various configurations and that he was from Southfield. Very interesting vehicles!
Fantastic to see this in its patinated glory. I thought these had all been vacuumed into a high end auction makeover. Lose that door sticker, though. Great find orangechallenger.
How did I miss this?!?!? My dad had one in the late Sixties, and I have many many fond memories of riding in it. Unfortunately the Cleveland rust mites ate her up by the mid Seventies and she was eventually parted out. Sad.
Rammstein, you simply have no taste – this car ugly? Then why was the DS voted the most beautiful car ever made in the last worldwide poling on significant cars? As for its tattiness, you don’t have a clue about the backstory of this car, nor should you. I got involved with this car in 1982, when two Citroen friends who knew me as twice Pres. of the Chicago Citroen club, and came to me with this car in horrendous condition, breaking in half, engine frozen, and hoped I could restore it for them, as I had repaired another convertible in the Detroit area before that and have been driving Citroens and maintaining them myself continuously since 1962. Long story short, when I started a deep dive into this wreck, i couldn’t believe how it had been butchered by a so-called professional restoration shop somewhere around Chicago.
The idiots who worked on it had no clue about structural engineering of a monocoque chassis, as shown by their trying to weld a 3/8 in. thick bar of steel to the bottom of the chassis sill boxes, then sandblasting the underside of the rear body, and covering the swiss cheese structure under the body shell with up to 1/2 inch of fiberglass. As I got further into the car, I practically sat down and cried over the abominable mess the last shop had made of the car. There was so little left of the platform structure that I had very little hope of ever being able to put this car back together. I sent the two friends in Chicago a videotape of how bad it was, and said I didn’t know if anyone could restore this without a huge, very well equipped shop and the price would be enormous. As I had a fulltime job and family at the time, I offered to buy them out as I didn’t see how i could even begin to put it back together. After seeing the video, they agreed and I reimbursed them and then some.
At that point, I had nothing to lose, so completed removal of the turtledeck, which with the doors and windshield frame are all that really comprise the cabrios. I mounted the turtledeck vertically on my garage floor, using an overhead gantry I designed & built which was strong enough to pick up the whole car. The bare chassis was in pieces, rusted thru about 50% all over. Having dealt with a lot of rusty DSs prior to this car, I knew exactly how bad the damage was, and that Chapron had never fixed a very significant design weakness in the DS chassis from day one. From 1982 to 1989 I worked part-time on the car, mainly over Christmas holidays when the family went south to the grandparents, cut rusted metal out of the turtledeck support structure, searched for and found a pristine Cal. car stripped chassis in the hands of a close friend, Rod, Burwell in New Haven Conn. Bought the bodiless chassis with dead engine still in it, towed it behind my ID sedan powering the dead car’s suspension with a line from my tow Cit back to Detroit. To guide me i had an extremely rare copy of Javel magazine documenting Chapron’s shop and his build method, which I followed and duplicated.
However, i went him one better: The closed box sills of the DS END right under the front hinge pillar, and the box becomes a distorted C section. Right here the sedans and consequently wagons and the cabrios all have the flexure point which leads to lots of cowl/dash shake when the roof is removed. i have photos of how the car’s structure was stitch-welded together at the factory, so knew exactly what I had to do to make this cabrio the strongest in the world, and it is now still the strongest unless someone else has done what i did. Not even an expert on these cars can tell that I sandwiched an 18 gauge, two side galvanized steel angle plate from the very rear of the sill box, thru the C section under the hinge pillar, and continued it to the firewall, making the sill a true BOX section instead of a poor second cousin. Mig-welded thruout, with doubled up cross braces inside the box extension, there is no other DS cabrio in the world which is as tough as this one.
1200 hours over 7 yrs it took to put this car on the road, with the same paint & top it had when I first got it. I was so tired after all that work, that I have done virtually nothing to improve the body since I began driving the car 25 years ago. It is my daily driver in decent weather, but never in the winter. I tow cars on my dolly with this car and don’t apolgize for that – I drive the hell out of it and on a 5 week road trip on the Raid America Northwest summer of ’94 my son Karl and i drove this car from Detroit to Vancouver, joined up with 26 2CV “Ducks”, drove 3500 miles over 3 wks thru the Pacific Northwest camping all the way, 7% mountain grades, Glacier, Yellowstone, to San Francisco, then headed home from the north end of Death Valley in August starting at Crankshaft junction, south over 40 miles of rough gravel road at 60 mph to arrive in Furnace Creek where it was 118 F in the shade. The car never overheated, but I had to wear gloves to hold the steering wheel. Then home thru 4 corners at 90 mph thru the night (Karl’s a leadfoot) to arrive in very good time with about 8,000 miles on the clock – never a breakdown.
Now 25 yrs later, the top still fits perfectly, the doors shut as well as they ever did, and a Citroen engineer who visited me around 1995 mentioned as we drove several sets of RR tracks – “your dash doesn’t shake”. Right…..BTW, that deli in Southfield makes great sandwiches and i don’t get permanents there folks – don’t assume anything from a particular parking spot. And Chris M, that backseat makes the car look narrow since there has to be some place to put the top – think man! A DS sedan has the roomiest backseat this side of a Rolls Royce. Good eye Nate – noticiing how clean the bottom of the sill looks vs the doorbottoms & rest of body – that’s because of that galvanized plate I built. Frankly, I’ve just been enjoying the car, rather than correct the fiberglass bottoms of the doors done by that idiot shop, and other areas that need fixing – the front fenders are stock sedan/wagon parts. The critical part of the windshield frame I had to make out of two pieces of hand-hammered chrome-moly steel to duplicate what Chapron did to strengthen the A pillars. All in all, I handmade about 41 pieces of steel to rebuild the car to better than Chapron’s standard. I’ll drive this car anywhere, anytime. It especially likes to run about 90 – all day. And as I used a ’70 Pallas chassis, it’s a green fluid car. The purists can complain, but this car incorporates everything I’ve learned over 50 yrs of driving & maintaining these cars. No owner of a perfectly restored or original DS cabrio has had as much fun with his car as I have with mine. As said, it’s my daily driver. And no one’s got enough money to buy this from me.
Lastly, for your info Don, that door decal cost me $3000 to participate in the 3 day Perfect 10 road tour put on by David E of Automobile Mag and Bob Lutz, then Pres. of Chrysler. I paid it as a Father’s Day gift for my Dad, who’d just nearly died from heart failure months before the tour, as Dad had gotten me started on Cits in ’62 when he brought home a ’58 DS19 from a Studebaker dealer for $260 with 22k miles on the clock. We cut our teeth on it. Fortunately the Mayo clinic saved Dad with an experimental pacemaker and he was a new man in time for the rally. He was tickled pink when we had dinner with Lutz one night, and had even gotten lost in the boonies of Wisconsin with Bob and Francois Castaing, then Chf Engr. of Chrysler – Bob’s Cummingham, Francois’ borrowed 300C and our DS – So Don, suggest you think a bit before you critique anything you know nothing about – ’nuff said?
No Ken ;
_not_ enough said ! =8-) .
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As a mechanic who also likes to save the oldies and then drive the living hell out of them , I want to hear more .
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I can fix things but never learned to weld and have been fighting with getting a Welder to do things like you did , forever .
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As an ex 2CV AZ owner , I wish I’da been there when 26 (!) of them were clattering across America with you .
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Twice now I have passed on a free Citroen D-I dunno what Sedan , maybe I shouldn’t have as I’ve never known an unhappy Citroen owner .
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I had to go back and look at the under carriage photo again ~ NO rust visible , you said this chariot has rust (?) not even a bubble to be seen , even the pinchwelds look prefect .
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None of the normal flat floor damage from shop jacks , rocks etc. either .
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As one who grew up in salty roads New England , I find this very impressive.
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-Nate
Ken, thanks for your comment. My hat’s off to you and your incredible job of putting this car back on the road and using it like you do. Amazing story!
The pictures of this car made it obvious that it was owned by someone who really used it thoroughly, and not worried about the cosmetic details. That’s my preferred way over the perfect trailer queens.
Your car embodies the Curbside Classic ethos to the very highest level, and if we had an award for the ultimate Curbside Classic, you and your car rightfully deserve it.
Thanks guys for the nice feedack – one good thing about not having had the money to pay for new paint & upholstery is a whole lot more of the public gets to see the car and it’s great fun having people come out of the woodwork who used to have a Cit or just want to learn about what I believe to be the single most innovative product in its industry since the Ford assembly line. I try to convince people these cars aren’t as complicated as they first appear – it’s just got a lot of basic plumbing, and if you can fix a sink, with a little thought these can be fixed just as easily. if I had sunk my life’s savings in a $10K paint job and another $5k in upholstery, I doubt I’d have it out of the garage every other day when it’s not raining. It may look like hell, but it runs like a train, and a real advantage is i know every nut & bolt & cranny, so I feel confident driving it anywhere – it talks to me. My background is in simple physics, and as I went thru the courses I was constantly realizing how thoroughly the designers thought out what a vehicle has to deal with, and how they threw away the book and rethought the whole concept of a car. Can anyone name another car where every suspension arm is mounted, not in rubber bushings, but tapered rollerbearings?? All the engineering manages to minimize stress on major parts to reduce longterm wear, and the durability of wheelbearings, steering components and others is way beyond most cars. In 52 yrs, I’ve only had two front wheelbearings get noisy, and in all the cars I’ve been thru have never had one outright fail. i have never replaced a front driveshaft due to wear. How many FWD cars can claim that? Many of the parts are way over-engineered but you never see them as they’re hidden and never cause trouble. Unless you’ve taken one of these cars apart, it’s hard to understand the fact that in 1957, GM execs disassembled one and cost-analyzed a ’57 DS. Conclusion? it would cost GM $10,000 in ’57 money just to duplicate the engineering in this car. I got that firsthand from one of the GM execs who bought the car (I was a consultant in engineering plastics development applications to the auto guys for 30 yrs thru my work for Dupont). As an example of the DS influence, the Pontiac Fiero was built like a DS – the entire unibody was driveable without a single bodypanel on it, and like the DS, the Fiero chassis was MACHINED where the plastic bodypanels mounted to the chassis since the dimensions of the plastic panel were more precise than stampings. The Pontiac mill/drill machine tended to bore holes thru the fender shotguns when the chassis stampings got out of tolerance or were miswelded!
Somebody in Auckland is doing the same to a genuine DS ragtop ,a massive undertaking as the bottom foot of the car is mostly missing but well eworth the results beautiful cars and a very rare find well done
Hats off to you Ken. I find these cars fascinating and now find the styling compelling. When I was younger I would have called them ugly, but now with so much appreciation for the engineering I think of them as amazing. I came across a 70s SM model at a local Pick n Pull wrecking yard about fifteen years ago. It was straight and complete but there was quite a bit of rust on the bottom. It was well past my skill level to save and I wasn’t in the position to pay anyone to do the work. I really respect your skills and your commitment in completing a project of such magnitude.
Quite a story. I’ve never seen a DS convertible in the metal, and it’s great to read about all the work that went into restoring it to roadworthy condition. Citroens are quite amazing cars, especially when you read about all that went into designing and building these classics, and keeping one on the road yourself must be very satisfying. Bonus points for using it as a (good weather) daily driver instead of a garage queen.
It’s a damn shame what happened to Automobile magazine – it’s just a website now, a division of Motor Trend with no real reason for existing and a masthead of writers and editors all of whom have long since departed. One day soon it will quietly disappear completely.
Automobile magazine was David E. Davis’ brainchild, and when he left the publication, its purpose pretty much left with him. As stated, its eventual demise is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
They fired and replaced most of the staff a year or two before the print magazine folded, which was not a good sign. CAR magazine from the UK, the original model for Automobile, continues on for now. Years ago CAR was combined with Boy Racer F1 Racing Supercar Mag Featuring the Latest Slight Variation of the Porsche 911 (well, something like that) which probably kept it going for single issue sales, but it’s never been the same since.