Citroen DS19 M Decapotable by Chapron RH
|
Automobilhersteller : |
Citroen |
|---|---|
|
Modell: |
DS19 M Decapotable by Chapron RH |
|
Jahr: |
1964-1965 |
|
Art: |
Cabriolet |
The Citroën DS is a four-door, front-engine, front-wheel-drive mid-size car manufactured and marketed by the French company Citroën from 1955 to 1975 in sedan, wagon/estate and convertible body configurations. Italian sculptor and industrial designer Flaminio Bertoni and the French aeronautical engineer André Lefèbvre styled and engineered the car. Paul Magès developed the hydro pneumatic self-levelling suspension.
Noted for its aerodynamic, futuristic body design and innovative technology, the DS set new standards in ride quality, handling, and braking. Citroën sold 1,455,746 cars, including 1,330,755 built at the manufacturer's original mass-production plant in Paris at the Quai André-Citroën (previously the Quai de Javel).
The DS came third in the 1999 Car of the Century poll recognizing the world's most influential auto designs and was named the most beautiful car of all time by Classic & Sports Car magazine.
After 18 years of secret development as the successor to the Traction Avant, the DS 19 was introduced on 5 October 1955 at the Paris Motor Show. In the first 15 minutes of the show, 743 orders were taken, and orders for the first day totalled 12,000.
The ID19 followed the DS19's example in using a punning name. While "DS" is pronounced in French as "Déesse" (goddess), "ID" is pronounced as "Idée" (idea).
The DS was the first mass production car with front power disc brakes. It also featured hydro pneumatic suspension including an automatic leveling system and variable ground clearance, power steering and a semi-automatic transmission (the transmission required no clutch pedal, but gears still had to be shifted by hand), though the shift lever controlled a powered hydraulic shift mechanism in place of a mechanical linkage, and a fiberglass roof which lowered the center of gravity and so reduced weight transfer. Inboard front brakes (as well as independent suspension) reduced unsprang weight. Different front and rear track widths and tire sizes reduced the unequal tire loading, which is well known to promote understeer, typical of front-engined and front-wheel drive cars.
As with all French cars, the DS design was affected by the tax horsepower system, which effectively mandated very small engines. Unlike the Traction Avant predecessor, there was no top-of-range model with a powerful six-cylinder engine. Citroën had planned an air-cooled flat-6 engine for the car, but did not have the funds to put the prototype engine into production.
In the DS they were also used for the suspension, clutch and transmission, although the later ID19 did have manual steering and a simplified power-braking system.
At a time when few passenger vehicles had independent suspension on all wheels, the application of the hydraulic system to the car's suspension system to provide a self-levelling system was an innovative move. This suspension allowed the car to achieve sharp handling combined with very high ride quality, frequently compared to a "magic carpet". The hydro pneumatic suspension used was pioneered the year before, on the rear of another car from Citroën, the top of range Traction Avant 15CV-H.allum, Roy Axe, Paul Bracq, and Leonardo Fioravanti.
In September 1962, the DS was restyled with a more aerodynamically efficient nose, better ventilation and other improvements. It retained the open two headlamp appearance, but was available with an optional set of driving lights mounted on the front fenders.
The 1955 DS19 was significantly more expensive than the car it replaced, the Citroën Traction Avant. This did impact potential sales in a country still recovering economically from World War II, so a cheaper submodel, the Citroën ID, was introduced in 1957. The ID shared the DS's body but was less powerful and luxurious. Although it shared the engine capacity of the DS engine (at this stage 1,911 cc), the ID provided a maximum power output of only 69 hp compared to the 75 hp claimed for the DS19. Power outputs were further differentiated in 1961 when the DS19 acquired a Weber-32 twin bodied carburetter, and the increasing availability of higher octane fuel enabled the manufacturer to increase the compression ratio from 7.5:1 to 8.5:1. A new DS19 now came with a promised 83 hp of power. The ID19 was also more traditional mechanically: it had no power steering and had conventional transmission and clutch instead of the DS's hydraulically controlled set-up. Initially the basic ID19 was sold on the French market with a price saving of more than 25% against the DS, although the differential was reduced at the end of 1961 when the manufacturer quietly withdrew the entry level ID19 "Normale" from sale. A station wagon variant, the ID Break, was introduced in 1958.
In a hydro pneumatic suspension system, each wheel is connected, not to a spring, but to a hydraulic suspension unit consisting of a hydraulic accumulator sphere of about 12 cm in diameter containing pressurized nitrogen, a cylinder containing hydraulic fluid screwed to the suspension sphere, a piston inside the cylinder connected by levers to the suspension itself, and a damper valve between the piston and the sphere. A membrane in the sphere prevented the nitrogen from escaping. The motion of the wheels translated to a motion of the piston, which acted on the oil in the nitrogen cushion and provided the spring effect. The damper valve took place of the shock absorber in conventional suspensions. The hydraulic cylinder was fed with hydraulic fluid from the main pressure reservoir via a height corrector, a valve controlled by the mid-position of the anti-roll bar connected to the axle. If the suspension was too low, the height corrector introduced high-pressure fluid; if it was too high, it released fluid back to the fluid reservoir. In this manner, a constant ride height was maintained. A control in the cabin allowed the driver to select one of five heights: normal riding height, two slightly higher riding heights for poor terrain, and two extreme positions for changing wheels. (The correct term, oleo pneumatic (oil-air), has never gained widespread use. Hydro pneumatic (water-air) continues to be preferred overwhelmingly.)
The DS did not have a jack for lifting the car off the ground. Instead, the hydraulic system enabled wheel changes with the aid of a simple adjustable stand. To change a flat tyre, one would adjust the suspension to its topmost setting, insert the stand into a special peg near the flat tyre, then readjust the suspension to its lowermost setting. The flat tyre would then retract upwards and hover above ground, ready to be changed. This system, used on the SM also, was superseded on the CX by a screw jack that, after the suspension was raised to the high position, lifted the tire clear of the ground. The DS system, while impressive to use, sometimes dropped the car quite suddenly, especially if the stand was not placed precisely or the ground was soft or unleveled.
The central part of the hydraulic system was the high pressure pump, which maintained a pressure of between 130 and 150 bar in two accumulators. These accumulators were very similar in construction to the suspension spheres. One was dedicated to the front brakes, and the other ran the other hydraulic systems. (On the simpler ID models, the front brakes operated from the main accumulator.) Thus in case of a hydraulic failure, the first indication would be that the steering became heavy, followed by the gearbox not working; only later would the brakes fail.
Two different hydraulic pumps were used. The DS used a seven-cylinder axial piston pump driven off two belts and delivering 175 bar (2,540 psi) of pressure. The ID19, with its simpler hydraulic system, had a single-cylinder pump driven by an eccentric on the camshaft.
The DS was initially offered only with the "hydraulique" four-speed semi-automatic (bvh—"boîte de vitesses hydraulique") gearbox.
This was a four-speed gearbox and clutch, operated by a hydraulic controller. To change gears, the driver flicked a lever behind the steering wheel to the next position and eased-up on the accelerator pedal. The hydraulic controller disengaged the clutch, engaged the nominated gear, and re-engaged the clutch. The speed of engagement of the clutch was controlled by a centrifugal regulator sensing engine rpm and driven off the camshaft by a belt, the position of the butterfly valve in the carburettor (i.e., the position of the accelerator), and the brake circuit. When the brake was pressed, the engine idle speed dropped to an rpm below the clutch engagement speed, thus preventing friction while stopped in gear at traffic lights. When the brake was released, the idle speed increased to the clutch dragging speed. The car would then creep forward much like automatic transmission cars. This drop in idle throttle position also caused the car to have more engine drag when the brakes were applied even before the car slowed to the idle speed in gear, preventing the engine from pulling against the brakes.
The later and simpler ID19 had the same gearbox and clutch, manually operated. This configuration was offered as a cheaper option for the DS in 1963. The mechanical aspects of the gearbox and clutch were completely conventional and the same elements were used in the ID 19. In September 1970, Citroën introduced a five-speed manual gearbox, in addition to the original four-speed unit.
Rarest and most collectable of all DS variants, a convertible was offered from 1958 until 1973.
It was an expensive car, so only 1,365 were sold. These DS convertibles used a special frame which was reinforced on the side members and rear suspension swing arm bearing box, similar to, but not identical to the Break (Station Wagon) frame. In total 1,365 d`usine convertibles were produced on the DS19 and DS21 chassis. The Cabriolet d'Usine (factory convertible) were built by French Carrossiers Henri Chapron, for the Citroën dealer network.
One of the most stylish cars of the 1960s, the latter was the creation of Parisian coachbuilder, Henri Chapron, who called his first such model 'La Croisette'. A native of Nouan-le-Fuzelier in the Sologne region of France, Henri Chapron founded his coachbuilding company in 1919 at Levallois-Perret an outskirt of Paris. Unlike so many fashionable French coachbuilders, Chapron carried none of the mental baggage that came from having graduated to cars from building horse-drawn carriages; consequently, his work had a freshness and innate sense of proportion that was well suited to chassis of quality. Chapron's interpretations of the Citroën DS and ID were quite different from the regular production versions. Chapron added fins to the rear wings as early as 1965 and launched his own version of an upmarket DS at the Porte de Versailles Salon de l'Auto in October 1964 using the name 'Majesty'. At first the conversion was not approved by Citroën, forcing Chapron to buy complete cars rather than rolling chassis, but eventually the factory relented and went on to produce its own ursine version on the longer chassis of the ID Break (estate) model. Chapron continued to build his own Le Caddy and Palm Beach convertibles together with various limousines and coupés. The most popular of the latter being 'Le Dandy'. Chapron's second take on a soft-top DS, Le Caddy first appeared in 1959 and represented a considerable improvement over La Croisette. Whereas the latter had used saloon-type rear wings, necessitating a covering strip for the join between the wing and the redundant rear 'door' panel, Le Caddy used a much neater one-piece wing. The saloon's front doors were used until 1960 when longer ones were adopted, resulting in a further improvement in the design's proportions. Only 34 examples of the Le Caddy convertible were built between 1959 and 1968. Needless to say, they are all highly desirable. Chapron manufactured 389 convertibles of his own, the last in 1973. Introduced in 1960 at the same time as Le Caddy and Le Dandy was another variation on the coupé theme, the Concorde, which featured a more generously proportioned cabin with greater headroom for the rear passengers. Chapron versions were exclusive for both their price and the limited production. It is believed that just 37 or 38 examples of the Concorde coupé were built between 1960 and 1965.Only 38 were built over the next five years. In addition, Chapron also produced a few coupés, non-works convertibles and special sedans (including the "Prestige", same wheelbase but with a central divider, and the "Lorraine" notchback).
