Citroën Considered Making A Tiny Version Of Their Famous Big Van

Look at that, I went two whole days without doing a Citroën-focused Cold Start! Should I get a medal? I should probably get a medal. Who do I talk to about that? Should I, like, call my congressman or governor or town alderman or something? I guess I’ll slap my valet awake and demand he get this all sorted, stat. Anyway, my streak of plural numbers of days is over, because there’s another Citroën I want to talk about! And this one was never released!

So, we’re all familiar with Citroën’s famous corrugated shed on wheels, the H-Van, right? Sure we are. It’s one of the best examples of utilitarian design in the whole Automotive Expanded Universe, I think. Even though we never got these in America, there’s more than a few of them around, often converted into coffee or food trucks. Hell, there’s companies that specialize in just that!

Anyway, if you forgot what they look like, here’s a picture, in both pickup and van forms:

I think this picture also gives you a sense of the size of these vans, too; not particularly huge, but not tiny, either.

Now, what I never realized is that Citroën considered a smaller version of the H Van at one point, calling it the G Van. The H Van was released in 1947, right after the war, and development had started on it as early as 1942. Citroën seemed to understand, with some optimism, that the war would eventually end, and when that happens people would need commercial vehicles once again, so best be ready.

Citroën used the running gear from their popular Traction Avant car for the H Van, a 1911cc inline-four liquid-cooled FWD drivetrain, though where on the Traction Avant the transaxle was ahead of the engine, in the van application they flipped that around so the engine was ahead of the transmission, which fit the space better under that stumpy hood.

Right around the same time, Citroën was also finalizing development of the 2CV, their small peasants’/peoples’ car that had been in the works since the late 1930s, and would be officially released in 1948, with a tiny 375cc air-cooled flat-twin making all of 9 horsepower. All this we know! What I didn’t know what that Citroën was also considering a smaller sibling to the H Van, based on the drivetrain of their new 2CV! This was the G Van.

The G Van, as you can see by that guy standing next to it, was quite small, at least for a commercial van. It shared the same basic design philosophy as the larger H Van, which is to say none, save for a liberal use of corrugated metal and a ruler. One notable and interesting detail is how the grille area is actually just a pair of flat recessed stampings in the bodywork, and not really a grille at all. since there was no tall radiator needed, no huge grille area was needed, with the low-mounted air-cooled engine getting all its air from that slot above the bumper.

If you look at diagrams of the G Van, you can see the clever and highly space-efficient way it was laid out: the 2CV engine – in this case bored out to a ravenous 475cc – sat low and between the front seats, just ahead of the front axle, essentially how it is in the 2CV.

The chassis and suspension are very 2CV-derived, but beefed up a bit and using torsion arms for springing. If you compare these drawings to similar blueprints of the H Van, you can see just how much smaller it really was:

The length of the cargo area of an H Van was about 95 inches (2430mm); on the G Van, it was closer to 78 inches (1810mm). That’s a good bit smaller.

Even though it was smaller, it would have been a pretty effective little commercial van, being almost a box on wheels with lots of unimpeded cargo space. Really, the 2CV-derived commercial vehicle that Citroën eventually did build, the AK/AZU Fourgonette, proved to be longer and have significantly less cargo space than the unrealized G Van:

With the Fourgonette, Citroën kept the standard 2CV body up to the B-pillar, meaning that there was all that hood area that couldn’t be used for cargo. The G Van sat the driver atop the front wheels, freeing up so much more cargo space behind.

The lone complete prototype still exists, and is in the collection of the Conservatoire Citroën, The Private Museum Collection, in Paris. If it wasn’t for that solid false grille, it would be almost impossible to tell the difference from this and an H Van at a distance. I suspect when you got close enough, the size difference would either make it clear, or convince you that you just grew a bit.