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?
Hey! That’s a pretty old Spanish licence plate right there! I think I see SE-9552-T, so the 1971+ format, but written in the old typeface, so from 1971 to 1986. From Sevilla in Andalucía. Unfortunately, what I have been able to find online is sparse for a typeface nerd like myself and often not consistent with what I have seen with my own two eyes.
Maybe the engine is flipped in an effort to better make it go backwards forwards quickly?
The Bishop’s brother’s 2CV is the prettiest one I’ve ever seen.
Wow – thanks! It is NOT by any means a perfect 2CV AT ALL; it’s a good “driver”. There’s a LOT of “perfect” options these days, with various US sellers working with Dutch shops that are doing complete rebuilds into what look like new cars (if you feel like paying ~$26K plus domestic shipping and the need to title it yourself). My car was more of a “perfect” opportunity; a long-term, local, well-known car with a caring owner who knew it was time to let it go on to someone else while it was still well cared-for. I wanted a car that had room for me to make it better over time. It has become my “fair weather” in-town daily driver. You meet a lot of new people driving a car like that. As The Bishop has said to me, “If you didn’t want attention, you wouldn’t have bought a yellow car that looks like a duck.”
Majorettes were always a class above. Many had either opening doors or hoods/hatches, but the suspension really made them fun to play with as a kid
I love that Jason used a 2CV workshop manual as background.
What’s wrong with a slice of American cheese over an order of hash browns Jason? Do you also hate hot dogs with Heinz Ketchup?
There’s been several engines in the 2CV over the whole production… from the original 375cm3 air cooled flat twin to the 602cm3 that was put in the 2CV6 & 2CV Charleston.
In between there’s two other engines the 435cm3 of the 2CV4 and the upscaled originial flat twin to 425cm3. ( and apparently there’s two version of that upscaled to 425cm3 engine )
So you have 5 different engine to look at to see if one match the model.
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. 🙁
Thanks! I actually bought the (local community-based) 2CV as my first-ever “non-appliance” (and first-ever manual!) car because it was inexpensive (really…) and because it is SO simple mechanically. I’ve debugged complex systems my entire life, but never done THAT much auto work other than the basics. So a 2CV has been perfect because it is SO easy to understand. And people just smile and ask about it when they see it.
Well, now I’m even more impressed! 😀 Your first manual? And it was cheap? My first manual (I didn’t know how to drive one and had nobody to teach me, but I sort of thought I understood what to do) was a ’79 Toyota Supra, and it probably was pretty cheap (I was fairly young at the time) and while it wasn’t a bad car, it basically had negative charisma when compared to (let’s say for example) a shiny, lemon-yellow Citroen 2CV. 😉
I yearn for simplicity in all things (a function of age I suspect) and have been toying with the idea of replacing my first-gen Volvo SUV with a nice 245 wagon. There’s SO much less plumbing under the hood of the wagon vs. my car… but sadly things are so expensive now: a decent 240 wagon of any sort will run the better part of $10K (and you can easily pay more of course, especially at Bring A Trailer) let alone a cleanish one with working AC and a manual transmission. 🙁
Your car really is lovely tBB. Thanks for sharing it with us.
It was not “cheap” for a 2CV, nor would it have been in the range that Jason and David prefer to get their cars. However, it was in range of BaT prices but I didn’t have to pay to ship it (the previous owner delivered it to me, we had tea, and we still meet up) and a local Citroen expert who also knew its history looked it over with me. So it was trustable, in good condition, and really easy to deal with. And it gets to stay in the local community for another owner.
It is a great car to use to learn manual – it hardly has enough power to burn the clutch, and if I take a little longer off the line or I’m slow, who’s gonna honk at that thing??? It’d be like kicking a puppy.
When I first moved to LA 30 years ago, amazingly (to me) there was a busy Citroen mechanic right on Melrose, just a few blocks west of Vine. He’s long since gone now, along with nearby Steve’s auto upholstery on Cahuenga. If he were still there, or I knew of a similar place near me, that knew what they were talking about, and wouldn’t ream me financially each time something goes awry, I’d probably risk the $15-20K it takes to get a semi-decent running DS these days.
We do still have Saab and Raffi on Hollywood Blvd., and I’ve been there once or twice, and my impression is that he definitely knows his stuff, but inflation (I guess) has pushed his rates up to where it makes me itchy to think about owning a car that I’d have to take there.
I’m also hoping it won’t be the last you see of my car on the Autopian, either. We’ll see if the staff is interested.
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.
And in many other places, too. Mine above was built in the Vigo, Spain factory (thus the previous owner’s original Madrid plates on it)
I have some random facts about your 2CV as I’m Spanish as your car! (and born just a hundred miles from Vigo, some years later though).
The plates are Spanish but are not from Madrid, although quite close. Spanish old plate system identified the province (a subdivision of our different 17 “states”). Your car is from the province of Segovia (hence the SE at the beginning; M was for Madrid, B for Barcelona, S for Seville, SA for Salamanca…).
Since the 2000s they changed that for a whole-country system of 4 numbers and 3 letters to avoid the problems of knowing the car origin. For example this was a typical problem in big football rivalries (and I mean the real football and not the “hold-and-through-by-hand-and-few-times-hit-with-foot-ball”). In a hot match between certain cities (like Madrid and Barcelona) it was likely that a few of the visitors supporters cars (or unlucky people not going to watch the match at all and just there by chance) ended with the tires punctured, windows smashed, burned…
I’ve checked our equivalent DMV online database and your car was originally registered in February 18th 1980, of course it’s gasoline fueled, and it is a trim “6 CT”; according to Google the 6 means more power than the previous versions (around 32 hp) and the CT comes from “Comfort”, i.e. with some extra “luxury” on the interior.
And there is a disclaimer in the system saying that there are “issues” that ban the car for circulation in Spain.
In theory I could pay 8 bucks to get a complete report including the detail of that issue (I guess it was simply the export) with history of ownership, history of ITV (Spanish version of the MOT tests that Adrian commented in his latest Ferrari article), if it had any recall… but as the car is so old I don’t know if there’ll be real interesting information there.
Cheers from the other side of the pond!
This is utterly amazing – Thank you! Yeah, none of this shocks me. The designation seems to fit a 2CV6. I’ll have to check the emails from the previous seller or just ask him; now that you mention it, Seville rings a bell even though I know he did work in Madrid. As for the issues keeping it off the road, I recall photos of the car in sad shape from maybe the last 1990s before he took it to a shop that redid it. It still has its last Spanish registration sticker, which expired in 2011 (he brought the car to the US in 2010).
At this point, any issues in this car are unlikely to be too hidden. There’s not much to hide 🙂
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
Eh, I’ve been called worse.
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.