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The company kept right on riding on Andre Citroen's road of radical research and development. When Citroen's tinny, square-nosed Deux Chevaux model made its debut 15 years ago, many people refused to ride in the "four wheels covered by an umbrella," and wags said that a can opener was needed to get in and out. But 1,500,000 Frenchmen have bought it-and are still buying it (current price: $1,055). For one thing, they like its "disposable" qualities: when a motorist scrunches up a fender, he can simply toss it away, screw on another one for a total cost of $20. Slightly more luxurious but no handsomer than the Deux Chevaux is Citroen's $1,350 AMI-6, whose slablike roof rests atop a grinning front end, and whose rearend-thanks to a remarkable suspension system-levels automatically after a front wheel encounters a bump.
Royal Disdain. Citroen's star is the shovel-nosed, short-tailed D519 ($2,727 in France), whose odd shape is aerodynamically designed to cut wind resistance. The favorite car of French Cabinet ministers and the preferred getaway car of French bank robbers, it easily guns up to 100 m.p.h., but hugs the road with its front-wheel drive and can stop on a franc with its two separate sets of brakes. The company is now experimenting for many years ahead, working on turbine engines and a radar ride control that will scan the road ahead and adjust the suspension system to any coming bumps.
Quiet, intense President Bercot is against exporting too many of his cars (too many expenses, too many compromises), does not think much of Detroit's proliferation of models. "We think offering a wide variety of models is too easy a solution," he said last week. "It is intellectually easy, and builders who take this way out are taking the easy way. Our concern is to offer the best possible car for the widest range of clients." Citroen is so confident of its philosophical approach to building autos that it even refers to one of its popular cars as "Descartes in nuts and bolts."