The Citroën Traction Avant () is the world's first mass-produced, semi-monocoque bodied, front-wheel drive car. A range of mostly four-door saloons and executive cars, as well as longer wheelbased "Commerciale", and three row seating "Familiale" models, were produced with four- and six-cylinder engines, by French carmaker Citroën from 1934 to 1957. With some 760,000 units built, the Traction Avants were the first front-wheel drives made in such (six-figure) quantity.
Whilst front-wheel drive and four-wheel independent suspension had been established in production cars by Auto Union, and subsequently by others a few years prior – the Traction Avant pioneered integrating these into a mass-production car with a crash resistant,La Traction Avant à l'épreuve du crash-test sur Orange Vidéos largely unitary, monocoque body. Additionally, the car was also an early adopter of rack and pinion steering.
Although the car's name ("Traction Avant" literally means "front traction") emphasized its front-wheel drive power delivery, the car stood out at least as much by its much lower profile and stance – made possible by the absence of a separate vehicle frame or chassis under the car's mostly unitary body – sharply distinguishing it visually from its taller contemporaries.
History
The Traction Avant, French for front-wheel drive, was designed by André Lefèbvre and Flaminio Bertoni in late 1933 / early 1934.
The Traction Avant was a recent entrant into the growing European front-wheel drive market, competing with the well established DKW F2 and Adler Trumpf models and joining other entrants at around the same time such as the BSA Scout. Front-wheel drive had appeared in the previous decade through luxury vehicle manufacturers Alvis, which built the 1928 Racing FWD in the UK, and Cord, which produced the L29 from 1929 to 1932 in the United States. Ultimately, the inline engine, front wheel drive layout of cars like the Citroën Avant was to be a dead end. Virtually all modern mass-produced front wheel drive cars use the compact transverse engine layout, as pioneered by DKW F1 from 1931 with a small two cylinder two stroke engine.
The Traction Avant's structure was a welded unitary body / chassis. Most other cars of the era were based on a separate frame (chassis) onto which the non-structural body ("coachwork") was built. Unitary construction (also called Unit Body or "Unibody" in the US) results in a lighter vehicle. It is now used for virtually all car construction.
This unitary body saved in steel per car. It was mass-produced, using innovative technology purchased from the American firm Budd Company. Weight reduction was a motivation for Citroën that American manufacturers of that time did not have.
This method of construction was viewed with great suspicion in many quarters, with doubts about its strength. A type of crash test was conceived, taking the form of driving the car off a cliff, to illustrate its great inherent resilience.
The novel design made the car very low-slung relative to its contemporaries – the Traction Avant went from appearing rakish in 1934 to familiar and somewhat old fashioned by 1955.
The suspension was very advanced for the car's era. The front wheels were independently sprung, using a torsion bar and wishbone suspension arrangement,"Torsion Bars Support Car Without Springs" Popular Mechanics, October 1934 drawings explaining suspension and body construction where most contemporaries used live axle and cart-type leaf spring designs. The rear suspension was a simple steel beam axle and a Panhard rod, trailing arms and torsion bars attached to a steel tube, which in turn was bolted to the main platform.
Since it was considerably lighter than conventional designs of the era, it was capable of 100 km/h (62 mph), and consumed fuel only at the rate of .
Investing for volume production The scale of investment in production capacity reflected André Citroën's ambitions for the car. Site preparation began during the winter of 1932/33, and on 15 March 1933 demolition of the existing factory started. Construction of the new factory started on 21 April, and by the end of August the building's shell had been erected, four times the size of the factory that it replaced, and using of structural iron and steel. All this was achieved while continuing to produce several hundred Rosalies every day. With characteristic showmanship, André Citroën celebrated by inviting 6,000 guests – mostly dealers and agents and others who would be involved in selling and promoting the car – to a spectacular banquet in the new and, at this stage, still empty factory, on 8 October 1933. Citroën's gesture quickly came to be seen as hubristic, as the ensuing months became a race against time to finish the development of the car and tool up for its production before his investors lost patience.
In the end, the first car was presented at Citroën's huge Paris showroom on 18 April 1934, by which time principal dealers had already had their own private unveiling on 23 March. There had been much chatter and speculation; before April 1934 the details of the car had been kept remarkably quiet outside the walls of the Quai de Javel plant. Volume production formally started on 19 April 1934. Although the revolutionary unitary bodyshell was, according to most reports, not affected by the rushed launch schedule, problems with transmission joints and the hydraulic brakes – another "first" in a volume car in Europe – reflected the financial pressure to get the car into production as quickly as possible.
Names Traction Avant, which translates as "front wheel drive", is not the official name. The car was named according to the French fiscal horsepower rating, or CV, used to determine annual car tax levels. However, manufacturers did not change the model name every time a change of engine size caused a change in fiscal horsepower.
For example, in 1934, Citroën introduced the 7, unofficially the 7A. They continued calling the car 7 when the 7B model's larger engine pushed it into the 9 CV tax band. Other designations were 11, 15/6 into the 16 CV tax band and 22.
In France, the Traction is known as "Reine de la Route" ("Queen of the Road").in French
Wartime disruption In September 1939, France declared war on Germany, and in June 1940 the German Army rapidly invaded and occupied Northern France. The war years were characterised by a desperate shortage of raw materials for civilian industry and of petrol, but these factors were not apparent instantly. The Paris Motor Show scheduled for October 1939 was cancelled at short notice; Citroën's own planned announcements had involved the forthcoming 2CV model rather than any significant changes to the Traction. For the Traction Avant, the last "normal" year in terms of production levels was 1939, and 8,120 of the 7C model, with wheelbase and , were produced. This fell to 1,133 in 1940, which was the first year when the plant suffered serious bomb damage – on this occasion caused by a German air attack – on 3 June 1940. Production of the cars was suspended in June 1941; by then a further 154 had been produced in the previous six-month period. The 7C continued to appear in Citroën price-lists until March 1944, but production of this smaller engined 7CV was not resumed after the war. For the more powerful 1911 cc engined 11 B-light models, the equivalent figures were 27,473 units produced in 1939, 4,415 in 1940 and 2,032 for 1941, though for this model production in 1941 ended only in November 1941 so the figure for that year represents 11 months of production.
In 1945, production restarted only slowly: the 11 B-light reappeared very little changed from the 1941 cars except that headlight surrounds were now painted rather than finished in chrome. By the end of December 1945, the year's production had reached 1,525. Currency depreciation is evident from the car's listed price, which had been 26,800 francs in January 1940, and had risen to 110,670 francs in October 1945. In 1945, the car was the only model available from Citroën, and as another sign of the times, customers not able to supply their own tires were charged an additional 9,455 francs for a set of five. In May 1946, presumably reflecting an easing of the war-time tire shortage, the car could at last be purchased with tires at no extra cost, but by now the overall price of an 11 B-light had risen to 121,180 francs.
The 11 B-normal model, differentiated from the 11 B-light by its wheelbase, underwent a similar drop in sales volumes between 1939 and 1941, with just 341 cars produced during the first seven months of 1941. After the war, a single 11 B-normal was produced in 1946, in time to be presented at the October 1946 Paris Motor Show: production built up during 1947, but during the car's ten-year post-war production period, the shorter 11 B-light would, in France, continue to outsell the 11 B-normal.
Initially the French Army lacked enthusiasm for the Traction Avant, believing it offered insufficient ground clearance for their needs. Nevertheless, by September 1939, roughly 250 had found their way into military service. With losses of cars at the frontier mounting, Citroën supplied a further 570 to the Army between February and May 1940, and subsequent deliveries probably took place before military defeat intervened. During the war many of the cars were reregistered with "WH..." (Wehrmacht Heer/Army command) license plates, having been requisitioned by the German Army. These gave reliable service both in France and further afield, notably in Libya and Stalingrad. Traction Avants were also favoured by the Resistance, and as occupation gave way to Liberation they turned up all over France with FFI inscribed proudly on their doors. Less gloriously, the cars were known as favourites among gangsters such as Pierrot le Fou and his Traction gang.
Engineering
Contrary to a fully unitized body design, the Traction Avant uses a significant front subframe to carry its front-mounted gearbox and front mid-mounted engine, and to connect its front-wheel drivetrain and independent suspension to the monocoque passenger cabin behind it.
The Traction Avant used a longitudinal, front-wheel drive layout, with the engine set well within the wheelbase, resulting in a very favourable weight distribution, aiding the car's advanced handling characteristics. The gearbox was placed at the front of the vehicle with the engine behind it and the differential between them, a layout shared with the later Renault 4 and 16 and first generation Renault 5, but the opposite way round to many longitudinal front-wheel drive cars, such as the Saab 96, Renault 12 and 18 and most Audi models.
The gear change was set in the dashboard, with the lever protruding through a vertical, H-shaped gate. Because this vertical orientation could have resulted in the car dropping out of gear when the lever was in the upper positions (i.e. second or reverse gears), the gear-shift mechanism was locked when the mechanical clutch was engaged and released when the clutch pedal was depressed. The result of this layout, along with pendant pedals, umbrella-type handbrake control and front bench seats, was a very spacious interior, with a flat and unobstructed floor. The low-slung arrangement also eliminated the need for running boards to step into or out of the vehicle. These features made them ideal for use as limousines and taxi cabs, and they were quite popular among drivers and passengers alike. Until 1953, black was the only colour available.
Classification in the French tax and insurance system The two four-cylinder engines had 7 CV and 11 CV as their name suggested. The six-cylinder 15 CV-Six, on the other hand, actually had 16 CV, while the eight-cylinder, of which only twelve were built, had, as its name suggests, 22 CV.
Variants Standard production sedans