If you have a car with a unique feature, even if that feature is not especially useful, at some point you have to use that feature. If you don’t, you’re only half-living your life, automotive or otherwise, and that just won’t do. You’ve got to try whatever the hell that thing is at least once. That’s why I drove my Citroën 2CV recently with a huge grandfather clock sticking out of the roof, and it’s also why I finally started my 2CV with a hand crank.
Yes, one of the things I love about the gleefully minimal and willfully primitive 2CV is that it retained its ability to be started via a hand crank throughout the duration of its long production run, from 1948 to 1990. Every 2CV built in that time came with a crank designed to provide an alternate means to start the car, should the battery or starter fail on you.
Luckily for you, and, let’s be honest, global history, I was able to capture this staggering moment on video:
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Dazzling, right? I was genuinely delighted when the thing finally caught and started. That’s not Instagram-fueled fake emotion there that you’re seeing; that’s genuine glee.
I think I could have gotten it started a bit quicker if I was able to keep the fan mesh in place, as it has a special – well, the owner’s manual says “orifice,” which sounds needlessly biological to me – to insert the crank, which helps keep it oriented properly and engaged with the dogs on the end of the crankshaft designed to take the crank end.
Here’s the page from the owner’s manual about crank starting, if you’re curious:
They also just call the hole the “entry” in the caption; “orifice” is limited to the explanatory text.
Also interesting on this page are the towing instructions; this may be the only owner’s manual I’ve had that specifically asks for a “length of wood” to go under the car and “stout padding” to protect the bumper. Ii wonder what they picture when they say “stout padding?” I wonder if it was made of stoat pudding?
The starting crank handle is actually the same tool as the crank for the jack and the other end of that same tool is the wheel lug nut wrench, too. But for some reason I can’t explain, the crank handle that came with my car had a little screw stuck into one of the little tabs at the end:
I have no idea why that screw is in there; I tried to get it out, but it was jammed up in there pretty good. As a result, the end wouldn’t go through that “orifice” which meant I had to remove the fan grate, and that made it a bit tricky to keep the crank aligned properly in the socket.
All of this is just to say that I suspect it may have started quicker if I had been able to keep that fan grate on. I mean, I think so, because keeping the crank aligned in that socket I think was part of the problem. But, eventually, it did work, and once it did catch, I was pleased with how quickly it started up.
I’m sure this is going to come in handy at some point; I feel like I’ve had to deal with dead batteries in cars many times, and have made many clumsy push-starts over the course of my automotive life. Being able to start a car with a dead battery while keeping the car stationary feels downright decadent.
While the 2CV was definitely one of the last cars to be sold that still came with a starting crank, it wasn’t the last. I think that honor goes to the Lada Niva, which retained a crank-start capability all the way up to 1997. Here’s a Niva getting cranked:
I drove a Niva in Iceland years ago, and loved it, but I didn’t get to crank start it then. I also attempted to crank start a Metz Plan Car once, but was unable to get it going, and the owner, the wonderful Paul Greenstein, didn’t hesitate to make fun of me as he got it started:
Oh well. The point is now I have successfully crank-started a car, even if it’s only a 602cc 2CV, and I can now relax knowing that my life is that much more complete.
I used to own a base model Kia Sorento. Stick shift, steel wheels, etc.
But it had a heater at the base of the windshield, in case it was ever parked outside and had snow/ice buildup that prevented the wipers from deploying.
We don’t get a ton of snow and ice here, but I was super excited the one time I got to use it.
My neighbor, who had a fancy Harley-Davidson edition F-150 Supercrew was jealous.
In the early 60s, my parents drove a 2CV built out of junk yard parts from Austria to Greece and back. My great uncle (a tractor and car mechanic) installed a crank “just in case,” and they used it as soon as they were too far away from his place for him to help fix the starter. Used the crank every day, had great adventures in the car, had great adventures in Greece (there was an epileptic horse, they spent the night in a Greek temple, the list goes on), the car got filthy, and they wrote Leonidas on the back and that has forever been its name in our family.
Hang on. Was this a Cold Start that was about starting a car from cold?
Holy shit. It was! Was this a first?
…. That satisfied feeling
Both “orefice “ and even “entry” are words from old-timey medical texts and sex manuals.