CarBrandLogos archive · Citroën · 1934
Front drive, monocoque and independent suspension in 1934 — and it bankrupted Citroën.
Discover the storyPhoto: Traction.fr · Public domain
The story
Explore the ideas, engineering and context that shaped the Citroën Traction Avant, then continue into its specifications and place in the marque's lineage.
01
André Lefèbvre, an aeronautical engineer who had worked for Gabriel Voisin, and the sculptor Flaminio Bertoni produced a car in 1934 that combined three ideas most manufacturers would not adopt for another twenty years: front-wheel drive, a welded monocoque body with no separate chassis, and independent suspension all round by torsion bars.
1938 Citroen hatchback · No machine-readable author provided. PLawrence99cx assumed (based on copyright claims). · Public domain
02
The consequences were visible from across the street. Without a chassis and a propshaft the floor could be flat and the whole car much lower, so the Traction Avant sat several inches closer to the ground than its contemporaries, with a long bonnet, running boards and a stance that made the upright saloons around it look Victorian. It also handled in a way nothing else did — the pull of the driven front wheels combined with the low centre of gravity gave it roadholding that made it the standard choice for both the French police and, notoriously, French criminals. The engineering was equally advanced beneath: wet cylinder liners that could be replaced without reboring, rack-and-pinion steering, and hydraulic brakes. It took the industry decades to catch up.
1954 Citroen 15CVH · No machine-readable author provided. PLawrence99cx assumed (based on copyright claims). · Public domain
03
Developing and tooling all of it at once, in the middle of the Depression, destroyed Citroën financially. The company was declared insolvent in December 1934 and its largest creditor, Michelin, took control. André Citroën died of cancer in July 1935, having lost the firm he built and never seeing the car succeed.
Citroen Traction 7A 1934 01 · Duke le Palois · Public domain
04
Succeed it did. Roughly three-quarters of a million were built over twenty-three years in France, Belgium, Germany and at Slough in England, and the Traction Avant was still in production in 1957, when it was replaced by a car even stranger than itself.
At a glance
Produced
1934–1941Engine
1.3 / 1.5 / 1.6 / 1.9 L I4Designer
Flaminio BertoniBody
4-door saloonTechnical specification
Badge at launch
This is the marque emblem that accompanied the Traction Avant's era. The full identity timeline is documented in the brand archive.
Explore the logo history →Lineage
Contemporaries from the 1930s
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