I’m Pretty Sure The Only Times Snoopy Drove A Car It Was In A Citroën 2CV

When I was a kid, I was pretty obsessed with Charles Schultz’ long-running comic strip about childhood and all of its under-appreciated angsts and existential pains, which went by the disarmingly and misleadingly simple name, Peanuts. It may be one of the most mis-named comic strips ever, and I think I recall that Shultz himself hated the name, as it was forced on him by the syndicate. Perhaps the most famous character from the strip, other than the perpetually-downtrodden Charlie Brown, Snoopy the beagle, was often seen doing many things generally far beyond the capabilities of a normal beagle. Things like typing bad prose on a manual typewriter (all while balanced on the apex of a dog house roof, no easy feat) and pretending to fly a WWI Sopwith Camel, often with some remarkable attention to detail.

But one thing Snoopy was almost never seen doing was driving a car. Except for one notable time, during one of the Peanuts animated specials. This was a full-length animated film from 1980 titled Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don’t Come Back!!) — that parenthetical doing the work to remind you that Schultz never tired of making poor Charlie Brown’s life difficult. Would it have killed him to give the kid one nice vacation?

In this film, Charlie Brown, along with his pal Linus, and also inspirational crypto-lesbian couple Peppermint Patty and Marcie, manage to become exchange students in France. Charlie Brown brings along Snoopy (who seems to have invited noted bird Woodstock along, too) and once in France, they need a way to get around, as the plot involves a mysterious invitation to a chateau in the French countryside. This group of elementary school students, a dog and a bird seem to have managed to rent a car, a blue Citroën 2CV, and Snoopy is chosen as the driver:

I suspect Snoopy got the driving gig because he (A) had a beret, and (B) in dog years I guess he was the only one old enough to drive an automobile. Did he have a license? Maybe not, but even back then pretty much anyone could go to an AAA branch and get one of those paper “International Driving Permits” and, honestly, I wouldn’t be too shocked to find out AAA doesn’t have a problem selling one of those mostly useless things to a dog.

In that clip above you can see the Peanuts gang walking through a rental lot full of non-specific but somehow still European-seeming cars. They all seem like some manner of blended up Volkswagen/Austin/Renault/Simca/Somethings and I find them generally quite charming. But there is at least one car that is definitely meant to be recognizable, most likely because it has become such a symbol of France itself: a Citroën 2CV.

The 2CV is fairly well-rendered by the animators, and is definitely identifiable. Snoopy does cause a chain of crashes that damages the rear end of the car, leading to Marcie yelling a lot of angry French to the other drivers. After all these decades, I decided to look up what she actually says, and it seems it’s a lot of oddly archaic expressions, which I suppose makes sense considering she’s a Midwestern American kid with an elementary school French education. Anyway, here’s the translation, via Reddit:

« Qu’est-ce que tu as dans le crâne !? » « What’s inside your head (skull) !? »

« Ouh ! Les cornes ! » « Oh ! The horns ! » (implicitly the devil’s)

Meaning : look ! He’s lying so hard I can see his devilish horns pointing outside his head ! First time I ever heard that ! I had to google the meaning, so it’s not used anymore nowadays.

« Que veux-tu que je fasse !? » « What do you want me to do !? » Here she is answering to something like « you shouldn’t have done X ! » the other driver is likely to imply she’s responsible for the car crash, so she’s basically saying « are you serious ?! You’re the one who crashed his car ! »

« Que dalle ! » « Hell no ! / No way ! »

This could be translated as « nothing » in other contexts. Here this is simply a reject of the other’s saying.

« Le pied de nez ? Du menu fretin ? » Seriously I don’t know to what she may be answering here … that’s also an old way of speaking. You won’t encounter these in any present situation.

Not technically insults, but certainly not a good way to make friends either.

There’s a lot of time in the movie devoted to Snoopy driving this 2CV around, which is a treat, and we even get some wiper-related hijinx:

The animators do a decent job of keeping things consistent regarding the damage to the rear end, as the mangled rear bumper shows up throughout:

This shot of the 2CV with the open roof but the umbrella used to keep out the rain feels like a nod to the famous quote from Pierre-Jules Boulanger, the man in charge of Citroën during the development of the 2CV, when he asked his engineers to “build me an umbrella with four wheels.” 

I don’t know if I really think this was a reference to that quote, but it’s an interesting coincidence.

Remember when I said this movie was the only time we see Snoopy drive? Well, I kind of lied. Because there is one more, but it’s a sequel, of sorts, to this movie, and it was 1983’s What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?, which picks up right from the end of Bon Voyage, and includes the same 2CV. For a while.

The blue 2CV has some mecahnical problems, which lets us see how the animators chose to render the engine. It’s not great. Here’s one example:

That engine is sort of a mess, with a lot of hard-to-identify parts. It does seem to include a radiator, which an air-cooled 2CV would not have. Other views are a little more carefully considered:

This looks more like an engine, but it seems to be a longitudinal inline-four, not the flat-twin of an actual 2CV. This one has a radiator, too. You’d think someone would have found a picture of an actual 2CV engine, right? I guess they couldn’t be bothered.

Eventually, the 2CV self-destructs

…which forces the kids to find a replacement vehicle, which turns out to be another 2CV, this one looking like a Charleston version, based on the two-tone paintjob:

I don’t think there was ever a brown-and-blue Charleston, but it doesn’t look bad!

This 2CV is a bit better rendered, with the hood ripples present, and a more carefully drawn front end, including a more accurate grille and bumper:

But, it’s still a 2CV, which means that we can still say the only car canonically seen driven by Snoopy is a Citroën 2CV. I’m a bit surprised by this myself, considering there were Peanuts-themed ads for the Ford Falcon back in the 1960s:

At this point, though, I’m standing by Snoopy being an exclusive 2CV-driver. This feels like important information to have, so I’m glad to have been of service.