Auto Design’s Most Outrageous Designer Once Modified A Citroën 2CV to Get 133 MPG

In my still-short time with my Citroën 2CV, I’ve come to respect the remarkable efficiency that seems to be the guiding light shining down upon every decision that was made in the engineering of the car. If there’s a part that could be eliminated, it’s not there. Things that don’t exist, generally, can’t break. The result is a wildly light, clever, and, yes, efficient machine. A stock 2CV is supposed to get about 43 MPG or so, which is fantastic. But it seems that wasn’t good enough for the famously eccentric designer Luigi Colani, who managed to build a very customized 2CV that got a shocking 133 miles per gallon.

Think about that! 138 mpg, way back in 1981! The 2CV has a gas tank about 6.5 gallons, so that would take the effective range of the car from about 280 miles to a staggering 864 miles! That would be enough to drive from New York to Atlanta without stopping, if you had such an urge and a truly colossal bladder.

Of course, Colani’s 2CV looked almost nothing like the archaic tin snail we all know and love. Really, did anything Colani design look like what you expect? Remember, this was a man whose take on a semi truck cab looked like this:

…and his take on a Volkswagen Polo looked like this:

Colani designed everything from forks to pianos to cars to hydrofoil boats, and all were designed with his signature biodynamic design language, and one doesn’t necessarily get the impression that his main goal was efficiency per se; Colani seemed to operate by his own set of rules and goals that originated either in his head, or, barring that, maybe the Codex Seraphinianus.

That’s sort of what puzzles me about his experimental take on the 2CV: the whole goal of the complete re-body was to, it seems, set a fuel economy record, and he seemed to have done just that, in 1981. Colani had always been interested in aerodynamics, but it usually seemed to come from a stylistic urge as opposed to an efficiency one. But not this time.

This time Colani seemed to mean business; the plastic body he wrapped the otherwise stock 2CV chassis in was slick and light. The frontal area was tiny, it had minimal protrusions of any sort, and an interesting Kamm-effect rear.

Only the distinctive three-stud wheels suggest the car’s true origins, and I’m surprised those weren’t covered with some manner of full wheel cover.

I can’t actually find any real numbers on what the drag coefficient of the final body was, but there are pictures of Colani himself seemingly playing with smoky streams in a wind tunnel, so some manner of wind-tunnel testing, even if it may have been more of vibe-aerodynamics variety, did take place.

It’s especially interesting to see underneath the body because it’s quite clear that it’s just stock 2CV mechanicals inside:

There’s the air-cooled flat-twin, there’s those distinctive curved suspension arms. All of this is pretty amazing when you think about the fact that the car they picked as the basis for their efficiency record was, in 1981, already a relic of a design at 33 years old. Aside from special low-rolling resistance tires from Goodyear, the re-designed body was the only significant change.

But what a change it was! After testing at Continental’s Contidrome track, they managed to use only 1.7727 liters of fuel per 100 kilometers, at a speed of 66 km/hr. I’m getting these numbers off of what was written right on the car, just before it was doused in champagne, as you can see here:

So, in Freedom Units, that comes to 132.7 miles per gallon at a steady 41 mph. That’s pretty amazing for a 1981 experiment based on a deliberately crude and basic 1948 mechanical design.

I know we usually think of Colani as something of a stunt designer, a flamboyant showman, but it’s great to see that he was capable of some genuinely practical feats, too.

(top image: Colani Design, Motorcar Classics, Intel)