Someone had once said that if Andre Citroen were not born, we would still be driving around in rear wheel drive cars. A bit of an exaggeration perhaps, but it's not entirely off the mark either. Manufacturers like Cord, Ruxton and Gardner produced front wheel driven cars several years before Citroen entered the scene but they were rather unreliable and never reached mass production. Citroen was the first company to make the front wheel drive car a true success story. And Andre Citroen called his new creation, Traction Avant.
When the Great Depression took its toll on the sales of the Citroen cars, Andre Citroen realized that he had to come up with a revolutionary car that would rescue the company from their financial quagmire. And in March 1934, the new Traction Avant 7CV was unveiled.
The Traction Avant was a revelation. Innovation was the name of the game and the Traction boasted of a host of them with the most important and visible being front wheel drive and a futuristic monocoque body. The absence of the chassis rail enabled the Traction to have a reduced ride height and a low center of gravity. The reduced weight and relatively good aerodynamics gave the Traction much better fuel economy as compared with its rivals. The low stance also gave the Traction a very sporting nature. The long running boards that were the order of the day were also done away with and the spare tyre was incorporated in the lid of the boot.
There were three basic Traction Avant models - the 7CV, 11CV and the 6-cylinder 15CV or 15/6. At the 1934 Paris Motor Show, Citroen showcased the very impressive 22CV, 8-cylinder model. There were only a few prototypes made and it never reached production. If anyone owns one of these, he literally owns a goldmine! Each of these models had a number of variants and the company customized them according to the client's specifications. The Traction certainly pulled Citroen out of the doldrums.
The car became a favourite with people on both sides of the law. It found great favour with bank robbers and other criminals like Bonnie and Clyde and was also a favorite with Al Capone's mafia. It was fast, had front wheel drive, handled very well and most importantly it was a reliable get away car. When the French police acquired a fleet of Traction Avants, the chase between the mob and the police became more frequent and spectacular. During the Second World War, the Tractions were used both by the German army as well as by the Resistance fighters for their hit and run tactics.
After the end of hostilities, Citroen started production again but had to take many austerity measures. For a few years the cars were available in a colour that can be best termed as 'nearly black' and since rubber was still in short supply, customers were asked to pay separately for the tyres!
The Traction Avant remained in production till 1957 with very few changes mechanically and the model that sold the most on both sides of WWII was the 11CV. In India also an overwhelming number of the Tractions are the 11CVs. And most of them are very well restored.
Driving around on a piece of history invariably gives any self respecting auto aficionado a huge kick. And I certainly got my highs when I drove this fine example of the futuristic French automobile owned by Ashish Sharma.
The 11CV has a 1.9-liter engine and develops 42bhp. The power output might look pretty inadequate by today's standard but it's by no means slow. The 4 cylinder pushrod engine is a very simple one and very similar to that of an Ambassador, although the pistons are a little larger and have five rings. One can even fit a Solex carb from an Ambassador, although it needs bigger jets and a modified flange. I've come across quite a few Tractions with cracked gearbox casings and this was probably because the driver had tried to jump start it once too often. It's an aluminium casing and can't take heavy jerks, and especially in the areas from where the halfshafts protrude. The three-speed gearbox is exceptionally smooth but adjusting the gearlever links certainly takes some doing. The gearlever protrudes from the dashboard and the two links travel all the way to the gearbox at the nose of the car.
The halfshafts protrude out of the gearbox and connect the front wheels – its movements are helped along the way by three universal joints. At first look, the joints look like those of a Jeep but they are slightly bigger. If the UV joints were not the right ones then there is an ugly and loud 'clang' every time you drop the clutch or decelerate in a hurry. And the car won't necessarily go where you point its nose. I had the good fortune to work on a couple of 11CVs and since I was unable to a get hold of the original UV joints, I used the cross from a Jeep and the caps and roller pins from a Nissan one tonne truck and got it going. It was a far cry from the real thing but I travelled hundreds of kilometres all over the North East without a breakdown. But tight corners were a big pain, literally. Ashish's Traction however had perfect UV joints and this made driving the car so much easier.
The Traction was ahead of its rivals on other fronts too. Most cars of that period had the Drag Link and the Recirculating Ball steering system. They were pretty vague and heavy and the cars tended to wander in fast corners. Since the Traction used the Rack and Pinion system, it had a huge advantage over its competitors and it offered precise and crisp steering.
We have been so spoilt by disc brakes that we expect a car to come to a grinding halt every time we as much as tap the pedal. The brakes of the Traction Avant could have been a little better even though the Traction was among the first cars to sport all round hydraulic brakes. The brake shoes are only about an inch and a half in width and if you want to stop in a big hurry then you just have stand on the brake pedal, close your eyes and pray like mad. But with a classic, one hardly comes across this kind of a situation. The master cylinder of the Traction is situated in such an impossible place that to get to it, the right side engine mounting has to be opened and even then it takes ages to open the six bolts that hold it. These are the type of eccentricities that strangely endear these cars and give them individuality in a world obsessed with jellybean shaped cars.
