There was a lot of enthusiasm for the Cold Start earlier this week about a drugstore-die-cast toy Toyota AE86 earlier this week, the one with the pop-up headlights, and so I suppose I’ve had die cast car details on my mind. On my desk lives a little yellow Majorette Citroën 2CV, and it even has an opening hood, so you can see their representation of the car’s tiny 602cc flat-twin engine. How accurate did they manage to make it?
I’m impressed they tried to do it remotely accurately at all; 1:64 scale is pretty damn small, and the way the interior plastic bits on these things tend to be molded is a pretty simple way, basically just like a flat bit of plastic melted over a form, like a slice of American cheese melted over a, say, pile of hash browns. Or a fist. You get the idea.
Anyway, what I’m getting at is that accuracy and detail are, at best, elusive in such a medium, but I’m still curious to see how well Majorette pulled off this challenge. Let’s see what we’ve got here:
There’s a decent amount of detail there! I can see what looks like the air cleaner and its hoses, a fan shroud, some pulleys and maybe what’s supposed to be the alternator – it’s got a lot of what you’d want to see in there, but I’m not really sure it’s all that accurate.
Luckily, there’s a 2CV nearby me, owned, incredibly, by the Bishop’s brother! It looks pretty much exactly like what the toy car is based on:
So let’s look under the hood:
Hm. There’s definitely some resemblance there, but the positioning of things seems a bit off. Let’s get a closer look at the toy engine:
…and let’s also look at a real one from a similar angle:
Okay, I think I see what’s going on: the toy’s engine seems flipped, left-to-right! The air cleaner is offset to the wrong side, and what I think are supposed to be the alternator and pulley and the oil fill tube are on the wrong side as well.
The prominent heat exchangers atop the engine seem to be gone entirely, and there’s some odd wall-like structures stuck in there, too, that don’t seem to really have a counterpart in reality.
That said, considering all the limitations, it’s not a bad effort! It resembles a 2CV engine, and I think that’s enough of an achievement on its own.
The underside is a little half-assed, though, but at least they sort of suggested the 2CV’s unique interconnected front and rear suspension setup? Better than nothing!
Still, I wonder why that engine mold got mirrored?
I just came here to say that this is the very first of Autopian’s Wednesday articles that I’ve opened purely for pleasure. Because Citroen 2CV. And Jason’s way with words. 🙂
Edited to add that the Bishop’s brother’s yellow 2CV is all kinds of awesome. The only thing that could possibly improve it would be if it had wheels like the die-cast model (which I’ve never seen in real life before) but I love the three holes in a flat, stamped steel disk, mirroring (what I assume are) the three lugs holding the wheel on to the hub.
DuckDuckGo’s AI suggests that air conditioning was actually an available option on some late-model 2CVs, which I find surprising (the sun is out and strong in a cloudless blue SoCal sky this morning).
I hate to admit it, but I’m not rich, brave, nor foolhardy enough to ever buy a Citroen. I’ve casually inquired a few times (a DS, a Traction Avant, and a cute little faded red 2CV Fourgonmette van in Santa Monica) and the fact remains that I’ve never managed to just hold my breath and actually buy one.
Which is sad, and I’m probably a lesser person for it. 🙁
Would that be demi-derrièred?
The hinge free front and rear hatches (and rear doors) on 2CVs, that you can just slide off an on, are brilliant! .. – Brilliant rust traps too of course 😀
“The prominent heat exchangers atop the engine…”
The heat exchangers around each hot exhaust manifold that are connected to the interior of the car with tubes made of cardboard. Where light weight meets lightweight.
Lots of old 2CV have engine fires when the cardboard tubes get damp, fall on the exhaust, then dry out enough to ignite.
Car Magazine discovered the cardboard tubes were a fire risk when they turbocharged a 2CV in the late 1980s.
I used to get my spares for my 2CV from junk yards, and I’d say a third of them were burnt out.
The rest were folded in half at the intersection of the A-pillar and the floor from frontal impacts.
I loved that thing, but it was objectively terrible.
Majorette being a French company they wouldn’t have done something completely off like a generic but underscale V8 with front radiator.
First time I’ve ever seen a Citroen engine.
Maybe it was modeled off a right-hand drive 2CV Jason (I like to pretend that flipping the entire engine bay was how Citroën solved the UK market)
Citroen made 2CVs in Slough (have fun pronouncing that), England.
I’ve heard more than enough rough stuff about Slough though.
Excellent work!
Everything you need to know about Slough.
Peugeot converted the 206 to RHD by doing as little as possible.
The switch for the brake lights is still on the left-hand side of the car, in the passenger footwell, operated by a bar stretching across the car to the brake pedal.
Everything else seems to have made it’s way to the right side of the car, I have no idea why the brake switch didn’t as well.
That is madness. Wonderfully French madness.
I assume it was just to fuck with us rosbif’s
Pop that plastic engine out, looks like a prime candidate for EV conversion. A quick search shows BMW motorcycle engines a popular swap for the full size with more than double HP.
This is a model of the rare nuclear-powered 2CV, oui?
“Ok, so we’re just about done with the design, we only have the engine bay left to do but we only have $30 left in the budget.”
“Let the intern handle it.”
Most likely the design was right but the mould maker flipped it.
Or the reference material got flipped. It’s surprisingly easy to do, particularly with a slide or transparency. One of the joys of working from actual film.
That weird extra-beefy frame all around the windshield makes it look like an armored 2CV, which felt like a hilarious concept until I Googled and found it was a thing, kinda sorta.
Thanks to the earlier article on drug store toy cars. I was in CVS last night and stopped by the toy car rack and there were removable doors and roofs from toy jeep wranglers all over the rack.