People, Potatoes, and 78 mpg: Driving the 1957 2CV Fourgonnette
Originally published on November 25, 2024. Photography by Colin Creitz, Courtesy of MotorTrend Group.
What can carry four people, 50 kg of potatoes, and only consume 3 liters of gas per 100 km? Yes, that’s right, it’s the Citroën 2CV. Or at least, that’s what the 2CV was supposed to be. Because when he set about starting the Très Petite Voiture project–French for “very small car”–Pierre Jules Boulanger, the vice president and chairman of Citroën, set out very stringent guidelines. It should be able to “carry four people and 50 kg of potatoes or a keg,” he said, travel at a maximum speed of 60 km/h, and only consume 3 liters of gas per 100 km. That’s about 78.48 mpg. Never mind how it looks, he said. In 1948 the answer to this riddle became the 2CV.
With a silhouette penned by a team of industrial designers that included Flaminio Bertoni and André Lefebvre, the 2CV became wildly popular in France. It combined a stylish (to some) art-deco style silhouette with extreme economy and quirks that included the ability to be disassembled without the use of conventional tools. The 2CV was sold in America from the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, but never sold in vast quantities. It was produced for the European market for nearly 42 years. The last 2CV didn’t roll off the production line until 1990.
And yet it appeared that in the mid-1950s, the basic version of the 2CV was not enough. In around 1951 a new version appeared. Meet the 2CV Fourgonnette, or just simply, Van as it was called in America. Motor Trend called it the 2CV Wagon.
The magazine published a review of the French subject in February 1957 and Walt Woron was there to give eager American readers all the details. The following selections here detail a bit about what the Motor Trend editor thought of the curious contraption featuring photographs from the Museum’s Archive of Petersen Publishing photography.
From the front, the 2CV Van looked much like an ordinary 2CV. From the side it did not. A boxy cab stuck to the succinctly streamlined frame from the original 2CV–giving it a look that somewhat defies classification. It also gave the model a carrying capacity of nearly 550 pounds. That’s nearly five times the amount of people, potatoes, or kegs that Boulanger imagined for the original TPV project.
In practice one of Motor Trend’s most poignant concerns about the Fourgonnette was its ability to live up to any semblance of performance. Since its engine produced “all of 12 horsepower” this seemed doubtful. Simply to drive “out of the way of more powerful cars” Walt Woron observed: “It takes a lot of pushing and pulling” and “downshifting on grades you didn’t even notice before.”
Woron had more positive observations about the Van’s technological layout, particularly its independent suspension. It “surprisingly absorbed” the “dips, bumps, and washboards” of the road. Another plus the Motor Trend crew noticed? The location of the spare tire made the 2CV’s wheel “comfortably close and easy to remove.”
Converting the 2CV to a utility vehicle had its downfalls, however, making other features less logical. Per the standard version, the door could be removed simply by “pulling it off its hinges.” But since the cab was added with little modification to the original 2CV design, if one were to open the door with the window up, it would shatter.
The best Woron could say for the design of the windows–which were hinged at the center–was that they “flapped like the wings of a gobbler about to take flight.”
Particularly convenient if one fancied a picnic but forgot to bring the chairs, the Fourgonnette’s seats were removable. Too bad it didn’t have a table. (And yes, before you ask, this was a feature in some cars. My own first car–a 1999 Honda CRV–did, in fact, come with a removable table in the back).
Though it was eccentric, the 2CV Van was economical. With characteristic Motor Trend attention-to-detail, the magazine calculated that it averaged around 35 to 45 mpg–far below the 78.48 target, but still impressive. This was around 15 mpg more than the average American economy car at the time. And, important to its ranking in the low-priced car segment, the 2CV Van cost from $1350 to $1395, which was nearly $750 less than the average American economy car.
So. Woron’s conclusion was that the Fourgonnette was definitively not perfect. In a statement that sounded suspiciously like it was gained from experience, he observed that in order “to put up with the 2-CV’s idiosyncrasies” the driver would “have to be able to laugh at the leers and jeers of fellow motorists.”
But in comparison to American cars, the Fourgonnette could haul people, potatoes, and a keg, for far less money. Plus, it was unique. As Woron cautioned his readers, “don’t laugh too loudly at the 2-CV.”
