Okay, yes, I’m still a little obsessed with Citroën 2CVs, mostly because there’s one sitting in my driveway right now. It’s a little frustrating because I’m also about to go on a road trip in an old taxi across the whole damn country on Wednesday, so I haven’t had time to really work on the little Gallic machine. I did order a new fuel pump already, though. And, I’ve been consuming 2CV content at an alarming rate, which made me realize how good some old 2CV newspaper ads were.
Now, these aren’t just print ads – they’re newspaper ads, which is a whole different category. In magazine print ads, carmakers had the luxury of showing their machines in luxuriant, full four-color-process photographs, on glossy paper. News paper ads were halftoned black-and-white rectangles, usually smaller than you’d like and crammed in among other ads. They couldn’t really rely on visuals, so they had to be extra clever.
My first job out of college was working as a designer for a newspaper in the ’90s, and I remember just how deeply and unfailingly crappy newsprint was as a medium to design for. The amount ink bleeds on newsprint is truly staggering – I remember designing layouts and ads and then testing them on a quick run of the presses (which were colossal, warehouse-sized machines that were louder than two 747s taking off in a bathroom stall and would plop down 90 pounds of paper after a 0.6-second run) and finding that they were solid black voids because of how much the ink spread.
Somewhere around the 1980s, Citroën’s ad agency had a run of some really clever print ads, in the vein of the old Doyle Dane Bernbach Volkswagen ads of the 1960s and 1970s. Like this one:
Comparing your car to a camel is a pretty great idea, because camels generally have a good reputation for durability and toughness and yet at the same time simply aren’t all that seriously cross-shopped by most carbuyers, even back in the 1980s. I especially like the reference to the June ’77 issue of What Camel. Maybe that last bit about the camel’s price is a bit offensive today, but you know, it was the ’80s.
This one is a nice example of some 1986-era image editing, as well as the use of some spot color in the lower part of the ad. The images carry this one, with that hot-rodded 2CV up top (which notes that it can exceed the UK’s 70 mph speed limit by a breathtaking 1.5 mph), and that eight-door limo version is pretty eye-catching, too.
The point of the ad is great, too: the 2CV is all you actually need in a car, and it’s cheap as hell – about $11,000 in today’s dollars.
Of course, the best of Citroën’s print ads has to be this one, which I suspect you may have encountered before, but we’re going to look at it anyway, because it’s jus that good:
So here, the 2CV is shown against the cars it’s most likely to be cross-shopped against, a Ferrari Mondial, a Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit, and a Porsche 911. That seems accurate, right?
Each of the claims is fantastic, ranging from the wildly improbable (FASTER THAN A FERRARI), but checks out when you read the details – a Ferrari doing 65 would get spanked by a 2CV doing 71.5 mph, that top speed of the 29 hp 2CV that Citroën was clearly ecstatic about.
There’s also the obvious ones (AS MANY WHEELS AS A ROLLS-ROYCE), and that one does suggest one of the fundamental truths about cars – that 2CV, selling for about 1/20 the price of that Rolls, will still get you from one place to another just as effectively as that Rolls-Royce. A Rolls won’t get you any more there, no matter where there is, than a 2CV will.
And the one with the Porsche 911 is great mostly because it refers to the 911’s “whale tail” rear wing as a “plastic luggage rack.”
It’s just funny stuff, remarkably good copywriting, and works very well even with the limitations of a newspaper ad.
Oh man. Am I really leaving on this road trip tomorrow? That taxi has no working A/C. Oof.
I wonder how long, and what sort of grade/wind conditions would be required to hit 71.5 mph? My 2CV only had 12 hp so it maxed out around 50, but it did have the advantage that you could drive it with the pedal mashed to the floor all the time so you didn’t have to worry about things like throttle modulation.
Heard the one about Bill Clinton and the camel?
This is great stuff. Torch, please tell me you’ve stocked up on AAA batteries for your portable cassette recorder. We need to hear the recordings of your thoughts are you trek across the country.
Torch! You Citroened all over my Mondial content!
What a great way to start the day. Yay Autopian!
I miss the cheeky car ads of the era. Up to and including the VW ads that ran into the early 2000s.
From that point on, I feel like every brand and model takes itself a little too seriously and they stopped making these comparisons. With all the wealth and income inequality today, it seems like a perfect time to pivot back to this angle (although you could also argue that even the cheapest cars today are almost illogical to buy new, so it could backfire).
In the early 2000s, I worked at a small agency (account service) with a former VW copywriter from that golden age. It was almost sad to see someone so qualified end up doing the thing that probably 95% of all art directors and writers have to do in real life, which is help write 27 different versions of the same cell phone ad for secondary newspaper markets around the Midwest and Plains states. Just so you don’t think I was missing out, I had to track the specs and the placements of all the IP and collateral images before it went to print. Mind. Numbing.
Seem to remember one in the UK where they joked about the English pronunciation of Citroën, Sit ron, which of course, means lemon in French…
Absolut…ly
Happy trails, Torch!
I miss the good old days when if my camel’s leg broke, I could just shoot it. Now camels just come with a can of Fix-A-Flat.
It’s early, but I’m throwing in for COTD
If your 2CV gets a flat, it doesn’t turn into a food source, though.
Point for the camel, then.
I had to look up the “cwt.” unit of measurement: turns out it’s a hundredweight, or 100 pounds. Interesting! 🙂 I’m assuming the c is a lower-case Roman numeral.
Also that’s disappointing about the AC. I thought with the replacement compressor you guys would be all set. 🙁
Presumably the ads are from the UK or Ireland, as Australia, New Zealand and South Africa went to different currency units when they decimalized in the ’60s, so one hundredweight would be 112 pounds or eight stone.
Bon voyage!! Vous aurez tous besoin de toute la chance possible!! (Assuming the translation app I used is at least reasonably accurate.)
Too bad about the timing of that camel comparison ad, as it came out *before* Emile Leray, a French electrician, made a motorcycle out of his 2CV in order to get out of the desert when he wrecked the 2CV in the middle of nowhere in 1993: https://www.hagerty.com/media/automotive-history/this-feisty-frenchman-turned-his-2cv-into-a-two-wheeler-to-escape-the-sahara/
It seems that this story was made up (by Leray himself). However, he did build an amazing array of vehicles, all built out of 2CV: the aforementioned motorbike (but built in his shop, not in the desert), a boat , and other vehicles that I don’t remember anymore.
Yeah, the jury is still out on that. So I’m gonna give Leray the benefit of the doubt especially given the consummate versality and wrenchability of the 2CV.
True story: my cousin drove my old 1979 2CV through the Sahara, and mangled one of the suspension arms on a rock.
He then found a wrecked 1950s 2CV in the dessert and harvested it for spare parts to fix his.
It helps to be part of a convoy of 2CVs, with some local knowledge.
He’s a hero. All I ever did was drive it from Hull to Poole.
The camel (pardon, 1Camel) ad is delightful. Genuinely funny advertising is fantastic, especially as it’s so rare.
Speaking of loud things, imagine that no-AC taxi with the windows open at Interstate speeds. Oof indeed.
Grew up in the ’80s. I don’t have to imagine it because I lived it. Our AMC Hornet had 4/60 AC: 4 windows open, 60mph, Ohio to Arizona.
’70s, riding in the family 8-passenger Dodge Sportsman van down the Garden State Parkway with the top-hinged vent windows flipped out.
Did you have vinyl seats for extra misery? Second degree burns AND sweat – what a combination!
And “plastic luggage rack” is now what I will call the rear wing on my coworker’s Porsche from now on. I love it.
And also because “whale tail” got co-opted in the late 90s for women with their thongs riding too high.
Having experienced around 55mph in one (GPS indicated), I do not wish to try 71.5mph. A speed which, yeah, I guess they made more power when new, but seems unlikely in the ones I’ve been in on real roads.
*please be advised that top speed is highly dependent on road incline, wind direction, position of the sun, weight of the driver, whether Jupiter or Mercury is in retrograde, tire air pressure, altitude, and the willingness and sheer skill (and/or luck) of the driver to actually maintain those speeds.
“Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt this.”
I CANNOT stress enough the importance of the driver being willing. In my limited experience, it will sound and feel like the world is coming to an end.
Meh, I have been flat out in a 2CV, complete with an insane singing Frenchman at the wheel (my boyfriend at the time). In Hungary, of all places. It was FINE. It wasn’t as scary as flat out in a Trabant – about the same speed, rather less blue smoke in the mirrors.