Pierre-Jules Boulanger

The story started back in 1935 when the then managing director of Citroen, Pierre-Jules Boulanger, was driving through a French village when he became stuck amongst a village fete. And while he sat in his car surrounded by horse drawn carriages and carts, but not a single motorcar, he had a fantastic idea. Motorcars at the time were large, heavy and expensive things - far out of reach for the average French farmer who needed to take his produce to market on Saturday, and his family to church on Sunday.

So on return to the Citroen factory Boulanger instructed his design office to “Design me a car to carry two people and fifty kilos of potatoes at 60km/h, using no more than three litres of fuel every 100km. It must be capable of running on the worst of roads, of being driven by a debutante, and must be totally comfortable. It’s price must be less than a third of the 11cv Traction Avant”, and so they did.