End of hydropneumatic suspension (apparently)

[Wilko220]

Just seen this...

 

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/industry-news/citroen/peugeot-citroen-to-scrap-hydropneumatic-suspension---report/

 

If it is true, it's very disappointing - although I'm surprised it has taken this long to be honest.

[vulgalour]

Could they not just save money by fitting smaller diameter steel wheels with proper tyres instead of gigantic cartwheels with rubber painted on?  Improved ride quality and money saved.  I'm a marketing genius.

[MarvinsMom]

that is a real shame, and before i've had a chance to try a car with the system fitted!

 

one thing though i think if true, and it certainly seems to be, then i don't think the citroen name plate itself can have that much of a future.

 

and that is a very sad thought.

 

citroen have oftern done things differently, so it is another interesting maker gone.... leaving even more bland germanic shit on the roads.

[ruffgeezer]

They'd be a lot more profitable if they stopped making ugly shit that nobody wants.

 

That said, the C3 2 is a cracking car for a modern.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

'Citroen' have been making shit peugeots for 25 years now. Although i quite lilke that cactus thing they make now. Only 970kg!!!! TELL ME MOAR

[MarvinsMom]

on one of those i'm not understanding what the rubber pad thing is all down the side of it....

 

i don't dislike it, just don't understand......

 

its maybe one of these yoooof things that i'm too old to understand....

[dollywobbler]

I drove a Cactus recently. It appeared to have no form of suspension at all. Disappointing, because it had a barking blown three-pot engine!

 

Hydro has been in decline for decades. Really, my XM doesn't display that much advantage over a decent coil-sprung set-up. A Jaguar XJ6 is more sublime, yet also manages to handle. It just became an unnecessary quirk, only appreciated by Citroen geeks. And most of those have no money and don't buy new cars.

[vulgalour]

Hydro has been in decline for decades. It just became an unnecessary quirk, only appreciated by Citroen geeks. And most of those have no money and don't buy new cars.

 

 

Preach it, sister!

 

[Junkman]

But "News agency Reuters is quoting ‘several sources close to the company’" is press speak and means "we made this up".

[Negative Creep]

Could they not just save money by fitting smaller diameter steel wheels with proper tyres instead of gigantic cartwheels with rubber painted on?  Improved ride quality and money saved.  I'm a marketing genius.

 

 

Problem is modern cars are so slab sided and have such massive wheel arches that smaller wheels look comicaly undersized. The new Transit is a great example of this

[dollywobbler]

But "News agency Reuters is quoting ‘several sources close to the company’" is press speak and means "we made this up".

 

I think there's a fair degree of truth in this. I even wonder if it's a deliberate ploy from PSA to test market reaction. There has been some talk that the next big DS will have hydro, but I suspect that after the success* of the C6, they don't really want to go to the trouble. Already, it's only some posh C5s that have hydro anyway.

[forddeliveryboy]

This proves that PSA really are shit-scared of all the Citroën Car Clubs and individual nutters around the world after all - if they weren't, the system would have been ditched at least a decade ago with none of this trial and error media technique. (They've ruined it, for the most part anyway, but wouldn't really understand how or why).

 

Most prestige marques have all got their own system to try and better the pretty crude steel spring - which is the suspension equivalent of cable brakes or candles instead of spark plugs. Not one alternative suspension system comes close to the Citroën original in terms of simplicity, cost-effectiveness or reliability and longevity. Mercedes have probably made the most comfortable system, at massive complexity and cost.

 

Chris Heyring is the man who saw the potential of the French genius and adapted it for the 21st century, having been inspired by his DS. It's quite fitting that he was originally an art lecturer in a small town in Western Oz, not some massively*-qualified automotive engineering graduate - the original engineer of the system had no 'education' beyond school.

 

Heyring originally made a Toyota pickup clamber over a tree trunk to prove the effectiveness of the system. Today, it's used by McLaren and Toyota/Lexus - as well as the military. The idea was bought by the US in 1999. It's ironic that PSA-Citroen bought into it for the WRC, helping Sébastien Loeb win time after time.

 

 

[catsinthewelder]

Looking at a linked article they are dropping the Citroen badges from the new DS5

 

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/first-official-pictures/citroen/citroen-ds5-facelifted-for-2015---drops-citroen-badge/

[Bren]

Do us a favour - stop making shit with wank diesel engines and electrics that make Lucas look like bosch.

[Noel Tidybeard]

try going on the shitroen car configurator an see if you can find which c5 has got hydro- cos i couldnt although there was reference to it somewhere

[CHRIS1980]

But "News agency Reuters is quoting ‘several sources close to the company’" is press speak and means "we made this up".

They were outside the factory looking through the wire mesh fence trying lip read someone who had a Gitane on the go.

[Vin]

Do us a favour - stop making shit with wank diesel engines and electrics that make Lucas look like bosch.

 

It wouldn't surprise me if the electrics were Bosch. I think they more or less supply everybody don't they??

[Negative Creep]

try going on the shitroen car configurator an see if you can find which c5 has got hydro- cos i couldnt although there was reference to it somewhere

 

I just built myself a C5 Tourer with the Techo Pack (actually quite handsome, even if the only colour choices are  white, black, silver or 5 shades of grey) and the tech summary says it as Hydractive 3 suspension. Looks like the 150 version has standard suspension

[steve_earwig]

Bosch, Siemen's or Valeo. All equally likely to go wrong, although Bosch is German so that's an impossibility

[steve_earwig]

Do us a favour - stop making shit with wank diesel engines and electrics that make Lucas look like bosch.

I feel this board needs a "hate" button.

[cros]

Just seen this...

http://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/industry-news/citroen/peugeot-citroen-to-scrap-hydropneumatic-suspension---report/

If it is true, it's very disappointing - although I'm surprised it has taken this long to be honest.

The article says that the hydro pneumatic chassis is 'devilishly complicated to maintain'. Naturally the writer has swapped a 405 rear suspension and compared it with the time and cost of changing front and rear spheres on a CX.

[Lacquer Peel]

The worst of it is keeping on top of rusty pipes as the cars age, but that's no more complicated than replacing a brake pipe.

 

I know modern Citroëns have primitive suspension cribbed from 40 year old VWs but it's not impossible to make a strut and torsion beam setup ride and handle well. I guess they've given up trying. Style over substance.

 

Why didn't they push hydropneumatic suspension as a unique selling point? I see some amount of heavily loaded estate cars dragging their arses towing caravans, self levelling suspension is a safety feature.

[cort16]

Mazda keep saying they've given up on the rotary then after 10 years when most folk have forgotten about how bad the previous one was they bring it back with promises of better fuel economy and reliability .

 

As lp says the truth is folk don't give a flying fuck about the engineering of it anymore . They just want, cheap tax, good mpg and their iphone to to work with it. Other than and the colour most folk don't really care.

[Asimo]

^^^  most folk don't really care as long as there is no colour

[cros]

You're not wrong there. I know little about modern cars but still take an interest. A while back an ex-mechanic called by in a new Mazda '6' he'd just bought new with his own money. Unbelievably he didn't actually know how many cylinders it had and when the bonnet was lifted to reveal the plastic coated 4 cylinder lump he just said that he'd assumed there would be 6 because of the name. Holy snapping arseholes batman.

[mercrocker]

^He would have been well chuffed with a Morris 8 then.....

[martc]

 he just said that he'd assumed there would be 6 because of the name. Holy snapping arseholes batman.

 

 

^He would have been well chuffed with a Morris 8 then.....

 

A Rover 3.5 would blow his mind completely.

[RayMK]

With a Volvo 343 he may have questioned his logic.  I wondered for many years why the Ministry of Defence (MOD) had owned so many Jaguar MK2s.  Apparently the abbreviation got hijacked by Manual/OverDrive.

[Junkman]

I'm not sure whether I will miss green puddles on the drive and that sinking feeling.

[forddeliveryboy]

The worst of it is keeping on top of rusty pipes as the cars age, but that's no more complicated than replacing a brake pipe.

 

I know modern Citroëns have primitive suspension cribbed from 40 year old VWs but it's not impossible to make a strut and torsion beam setup ride and handle well. I guess they've given up trying. Style over substance.

 

Why didn't they push hydropneumatic suspension as a unique selling point? I see some amount of heavily loaded estate cars dragging their arses towing caravans, self levelling suspension is a safety feature.

 

 

Thing is, the suspension was designed to allow their cars to maintain high speeds over post-war French roads with the highest safety possible. (The sort of roads on which a Mercedes would be forced to travel at 40mph and over which many British cars literally fell apart.) Today, roads are clogged and brisk speeds help pay off national debts, but foundations and surfaces have gone all German, across Europe. The chances of encountering a nasty series of nids-de-poules mid-corner at high speed, with one hand otherwise engaged with your passenger, are remote.

 

Most people don't work physically hard any more, so bodies with spare energy enjoy the constant jiggling up and down today's suspension offers. It also gives the impression that speed is high. Excess body fat has taken the place of the sumptuous seat, so that a leather-covered piece of plastic is regarded as ok. High speed is regarded as a sin more punishable than assault, far more of a crime than sleeping with another man's wife.

 

If anything should be done with suspension for the man in the street, it should start with tyres. And progress to springs which allow the body to move in relation to the wheels, so allowing safer and faster progress for those who don't live on the motorway network.

 

There is an irony in the fact that the best vehicle suspension systems available today are used by Toyota/Lexus 4x4s and JCBs (the first, Heyring's system, the second, Citroën's). If it weren't for the McLaren's use of Heyring's Kinetic system, I'd say automotive evolution was well in reverse gear. Will we ever see it on 'ordinary' cars? I doubt it, people prefer unnecessary buttons and computers rather than a really good vehicle - and besides, good suspension makes a car feel slower.