These people really aim very badly.
~General and President Charles de Gaulle
Events of the evening of 22 August 1962 would shape the plot of a 1974 Academy Award winning thriller, The Day of the Jackal.
Riding in his chauffeur-driven black Citroën DS 19, President de Gaulle, 71, and his wife were headed to a Paris airport to fly to their summer home.
As their motorcade passed two vehicles, machine-gun fire raked the fast-moving Citroën. The Organisation armée secrète (OAS) had targeted de Gaulle for assassination.
As many as a dozen gunmen opened fire; as many as 16 were arrested. Nine stood trial, and three were sentenced to death.
Details (contemporaneous and contemporary) differ: about 150 bullets; eight bullets struck the body of the car; bullets punctured two-or-four tires; people died, people didn’t die.
What’s undeniable is that the Citroën and chauffeur saved their lives.
Citroën unveiled the futuristic, aerodynamic DS at the Paris Motor Show in 1955. It looked, and performed, like nothing else on the market.
Citroën long had a history of developing cars that were well ahead of their time in terms of design and features. The 1934 Traction Avant was the world’s first unibody front-wheel-drive car, pioneering a setup that would become the standard in most passenger cars.
In 1940, Citroën chairman Pierre-Jules Boulanger hid engineering designs from invading Germans. When World War II ended in 1945, France, like most of Europe, had been maimed. Boulanger knew that the country needed cars that were “fuel-efficient and built to handle extremely rough terrain. He also wanted the DS to be most sophisticated car in the world.”
Rather than springs and shock absorbers, the Citroën DS sported a hydropneumatic suspension system that relied on “interconnected, fluid and gas-filled spheres to smooth out road imperfections.” With this system, the car could adapt to changing road conditions and always remain level.
It also means the car could be driven safely with one tire completely missing:
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@kegill
Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com