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A "new" engine
Following the abandoning of the flat six , Georges Sainturat,
the man responsible for designing the Traction's engine was given the task
of redesigning that engine so it could be used in the new car. He reworked
the cylinder head of the 1 911cc engine (the Traction six cylinder was
too long) and with various modifications managed to extract 75 bhp from
it. The "new" engine was too tall to fit in front of the gearbox so the
Traction layout was employed even though this meant that the engine protruded
into the passenger compartment. |
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Above - DS engine - front of the car to the left
Below - ID engine - front of the car to the left |
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| Little by little, the bugs were solved. The hydraulic fluid formulation was improved to reduce oxydisation caused by the intensely hygroscopic properties of the early fluid and eventually, the DS became as reliable as any of its conventional contemporaries - if maintained properly. |
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| The futuristic dashboard was every bit as astonishing as the space age exterior. |
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| In
an attempt to ameliorate this problem, designs incorporating the differential
inside the sump were worked on. This meant that the engine/transmission
assembly could be shortened but financial constraints meant that the project
was abandoned. |
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Above - DS engine - front of the car to the right
Below - ID engine - front of the car to the right |
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Disc brakes
Following Jaguar's 1953 win at le Mans with car equipped with Dunlop disc brakes, it was decided to equip Projet D with front discs mounted inboard on either side of the differential. The DS was effectively a mid-engined front wheel drive car. |
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| The body design was
still undecided six months before the new car's launch. Bertoni eventually
came up with the definitive shape - a dashboard moulded out of plastic,
a single spoke wheel, air vents, rear indicators mounted above the C pillars
were all realised at a very late stage as were the precise angles of front
and rear screens. |
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Thursday 5th October
1955
At 9 o'clock, the
new Citroën was unveiled at the Paris motor show. Minutes later, dozens
of Projet D - now officially named DS 19 were driven out of the factory
gates and into the Paris traffic. By 09:45 that morning, Citroën had
taken 749 firm orders and by the end of the day, 12 000 orders had been
placed, the vast majority by people who had never seen the car. The Traction
effect had been repeated. |
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| Unfortunately, so had the problems. No-one had the faintest idea how these cars worked. The workshops had no manuals. The salesmen had no publicity material. The obsessive need for secrecy had worked against the company. early cars were less than totally reliable. Many was the owner who found himself stranded with no steering, no brakes, no
clutch, no gearchange , no suspension and a big pool of fluid under
his car. The local garagiste had no idea what to do. The company
quickly mobilised itself, providing the agents with the necessary workshop
manuals and training to allow it to honour its guarantees. But when it
was working, the DS was undoubtedly la Reine de la Route offering novelty and modernism in addition to unprecedented levels of comfort, road holding, braking and safety. |
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