End of hydropneumatic suspension (apparently)

[Uncle Jimmy]

Thing is, the suspension was designed to allow their cars to maintain high speeds over post-war French roads with the highest safety possible. 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.

 

 

You don't regard the UK as part of Europe then?

[Uncle Jimmy]

Often pot holes are best taken at higher speeds as the apt film 'The wages of fear' suggests. Pity about Citroen.

[forddeliveryboy]

You don't regard the UK as part of Europe then?

 

Well, yes - travel any distance in the English bit of the UK and chances are you'll end up on a motorway or dual carriageway. Should have written, "throughout Europe", perhaps that'd've sounded more inclusive?

[Junkman]

I'd say automotive evolution was well in reverse gear.

 

I say it is. Since 1986. And I am right.

[Jim Bergerac]

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.

 

Yes, they should. Take that DS5 thing they do, when it came out all the press slammed it for having a shit ride quality. Now historically, the one thing you could count on from a big Citroen was a wonderfully smooth ride on account of the suspension system. They now offer this supposedly upmarket BMW-rival that rides worse than a BMW or Audi leaving the sole selling point of precipitous depreciation. 

[CHRIS1980]

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

Perhaps the Bosch bit they fit for Citroen come with zee kaput module plugged inline.

[mercrocker]

Europe still is a foreign country to those of us educated at a certain point in time. Trouble is of course when you go there now it looks just like Britain, or America....A big reason for that is the lack of skinny tyred French cars with their arse in the air, big arrogant white steering wheeled Mercs, suicidally driven little red Fiats and DAFs hobbling over cobbled streets. The final loss of Citroen would seem to be the nail in the coffin for what Europe symbolised to me - a true confederation of vastly different peoples united by trying to heal the atrocities of the 1940s. Vive la difference.....

[richardmorris]

The apalling state of the roads in the uk should be a major selling point for oleo pneumatics. Sadly since most

Roads in France are now billiard table smooth it isn't needed in the home country. The Tour de France helps with this- any small town bidding for a stage depart or finis is likely to have a lot of new Tarmac.

 

Having said that, I am bemused by French road signs pronouncing " trous en formation". They've bothered to erect a permanent warning sign, but not to actually do anything about it.

[eifion]

nids-de-poules

 

 

Thanks for saying that. I heard Alan Clark say it on an episode of The Car's The Star about the Citroen DS more years ago than I'd rather think about. I always wondered what the term actually was.

 

Here he is in his lovely décapotable (the last one ever made) saying it:  https://youtu.be/1AjmLmG16Nw?t=741

[NorfolkNWeigh]

I didn't know you could still get C5s in this country, I thought they'd given up selling them about the same time Renault gave up on the Laguna.

The only advantage I ever saw with ' hydro' suspension was for towing. I used to think I was so clever with my BXTZi estate lining up the ball then raising the suspension into the socket , that and changing punctures, of course.

[Talbotman]

Time and customer perception have caught up with hydropneumatic suspension. Cars are now sold on dynamic handling prowess and power rather than comfort and practicality. Looking back 30 years the Bx and the Xantia cemented Citroens UK fleet aspirations with distinctive and successful sales to fleet and punters alike.Its's easy to forget how well regarded and successful the Xantia was in its day.The smart Bertone lines striking a chord with the public.Customers bought it because they liked the car and not just for the suspension. Then the Psa management in all their infinite wisdom decided that they thought people just bought them for the comfort and practicality..and gave the unwashed public the ungainly C5....just at the time when Ze Germans were on the march with their Chunky wheel at each corner stanced A4s and 3 series and Boras....the modern equivalent of 80s shoulderpads powerdressing for the everyday motorist, even if your debadged beemer only had a wheezing old 4 pot pulling you along. No matter if it was superbly comfortable..had the highest n cap rating for any mid range car..could tow a caravan with ease...all of a sudden you bought a C5 because you wanted the suspension and not necessarily because you liked the car itself. As others have said above, Citroens marketing of the suspension itself has been woeful...but it's just really an indication of how times have sadly changed. When was the last time you read a motoring mag front headline "Wow the most comfortable car to ride potholes ever...definitely the car to beat in its class!" Nope cars are now sold on so called dynamic prowess, whether their a cheap Kia shopping trolley or a 250k Bentley......never mind if it's got a bone hard ride..or a rear seat harder than a park bench..if it's ride and handling are "well resolved" then your on to a winner. It's for that reason their ditching it as much as cost reasons..the next mid size Psa platform is shared with Gm I believe. The marketing disadvantages in this day and age of a public being offered a car with 'soft' 'wallowy' complicated 'french' suspension and dynamics are just tantamount to financial suicide. Psa's beancounters are now wise to that fact.

[Magnificent Rustbucket]

I have surprised myself at just how disappointed I would be if this turns out to be true. I have long liked Citroens, though more so their past models - up to and including the Xantia. The CX is my particular favourite. I have always liked the idea of the  hydropneumatic suspension and found it interesting. As a child, I loved to watch the Citroen CXs rise up before they drove off. France really felt a foreign country, doing things differently, then.

 

Even if I have never really wanted to own one, I am pleased that Citroens exist. I think it s a form of admiration; it pleases me that my own car (Jaguar XJ40) contains visible Citroen technology - as it does that I can find it in a Rolls-Royce. It is this sort of thing which interests me in a car. Not motorsport heritage or lap times. It is what makes a Maserati more interesting to me than a Ferarri.

 

I don't mourn for the past, not yearn for it especially, but it is true to say that cars are no longer aimed at an enthusiast owner - just at someone who can make the payments. 'Interesting' doesn't sell. No one seems to have confidence in their own taste; they want what everyone else wants. Diversity is stone-dead because of it, along with style - and that does sadden me.

[forddeliveryboy]

I think it's pretty obvious Peugeot didn't wish to be upstaged by their new 'partner', after the buyout. So the SM was junked, only big Pugs received V6s throughout the 70s and 80s and Citroen was encouraged to make cars like the LNA (no insult implied - just contrasting the before and after). Compare the good-looking 205 with the odd-shaped Visa, it's obvious who had the money to spend.

 

The company which had been the definition of avant-garde from the 30s to the 70s was steadily turned into making boxy, conventional machines - the gas over oil suspension allowed to remain on bigger models, albeit grafted around quite ordinary underpinnings. I think the Peugeot masters wanted to give a lesson for Citroen in how boring and conventional makes for a successful company. The ZX is a great example of how some of the magic lived on, despite utterly conventional everything. So much better than a 306.

 

It's also worth asking where does a car maker which every other mass manufacturer copied (front drive, rack and pinion steering, fundamentally safe but sharp handling, wide track, roadwheel at each corner, monocoque construction, slippery through the air) actually go once this has happened, especially when it's been swallowed by another company.

 

 

Cars are now sold on dynamic prowess rather than comfort and practicality

 

Citroën led the world with dynamic prowess from the early 30s right through to the 80s. Comfort was the result of making a car which gave the best roadholding on real roads. I don't call the ability to lap a race track 'dynamic prowess' at all, unless you're wanting to race a car on a track. Modern cars are fast to accelerate, fast round roundabouts and slip road curves but often provide poor transport on a damp, twisting road with surface and foundation irregularities - which is all of them round here.

[Lacquer Peel]

You say Peugeots are boring and conventional, I say at their best, the ones designed in the 1980s and 1990s, they offered a loping ride and brilliant handling without the complexity of hydropneumatic suspension.

[forddeliveryboy]

Didn't quite say as much, I was trying to suggest that Peugeot disagreed with the idea of making cars exciting and unconventional and wanted to teach Citroen how their way wouldn't lead to bankruptcy. The GS was not the right car to compete in the Escort sector, no matter how awesome.

 

Peugeot themselves were struggling hugely through the 70s and into the early 80s, it was the 205 which saved their bacon, followed by the wonderful 405 - a more complete car than the Citroen-badged version. My own particular favourite is the 305 in van/estate form - brilliant. A lot of their superior ride was due to the long wheelbase and quality of the dampers used - do they still make their own?

[Talbotman]

Sadly Peugeot have stopped making their own dampers...and if that has been let to happen on cost grounds...it a pretty certain bet that the last vestiges of Hydro shall be dropped on the Citroen side too.

[explosive-cabbage]

Why is everyone bashing forddeliveryboy?

 

He has an excellent practical knowledge of Citroens and is not being an arse, he is just trying to educate us all a bit further.

 

He's trying to hold the thread together!

[dollywobbler]

I don't think Peugeot had any choice but to drop the SM. It was a massive money loser. That was fine when Michelin was prepared to treat Citroen as an advertising scheme for its tyres, but Peugeot was more interested in an actual profit.

When you look at how much more of a success the BX was than the GS, I can't help thinking they may have been right. Sadly, since then, cars really have become more about marketing and style than substance. You can't polish a turd, but you can create a new DS brand to sell them to trendy types.

[forddeliveryboy]

I don't think Peugeot had any choice but to drop the SM.

When you look at how much more of a success the BX was than the GS, I can't help thinking they may have been right.

 

 

Weren't more GS (incl the GSa facelift) made than BXs? From what I can find on the net, the numbers were similar but definitely in favour of the one made from Citroën-designed mechanical bits, which given the trade barriers back in the seventies is quite revealing - it sounds like the French bought many more GS than BX. The BX's sales were helped by a huge model range, the brilliant XUD versions and 'sporting' variants - in total contrast to their approach with the GS/a, where there were basically two power options (both smallish), two trim levels and an estate version.

 

Cars like the SM are usually loss-leaders for manufacturers, since they sell in such small numbers. But they enhance the image of a whole range, increasing sales of bread and butter models - the idea being that money lost on sales of a flagship is recouped several times over by increased sales of the rest of the range. Audi took the A8 into production not expecting to make money on it, but hoping for increased sales of A4s.

 

It's totally understandable that Peugeot didn't want to be outshone by the car maker it had just bought, which it intended to turn into the cheaper brand of the two. Citroën was a particularly awkward business to take on, a bit like fostering a brilliant child who'd taken to creating mayhem. But if only someone like Honda had taken the reins, it could have been a very different story. Which isn't to say the gas suspension as is would have lasted longer, but they would have done something interesting with it, I'm sure.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

.if it's ride and handling are "well resolved" then your on to a winner.

 

 

Or 'focussed' as they say on PH or in EGO magazine.

 

Here in Sheffield where any kind of progress involves swerving or crashing from pothole to pothole, I'd love a car with decent suspension.

 

But, folk have been accustomed to rubbish cars with shit suspension and hard seats. Make the dampers for 50p each and disguise their shitness with stupidly hard springs. A pity because cars can be very good. The Laguna 11 that I ran a while was excellent in this respect - long boingy springs, well judged damping and the comfiest seats EVARH. As a result it laughed at our sorry collection of fucked, badly repaired tarmac tracks as well as possessing very good handling without being AMG S Line M Power with 19's.

 

Oh and Citroen. Why does it still exist?

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Didn't quite say as much, I was trying to suggest that Peugeot disagreed with the idea of making cars exciting and unconventional and wanted to teach Citroen how their way wouldn't lead to bankruptcy. The GS was not the right car to compete in the Escort sector, no matter how awesome.

 

Peugeot themselves were struggling hugely through the 70s and into the early 80s, it was the 205 which saved their bacon, followed by the wonderful 405 - a more complete car than the Citroen-badged version. My own particular favourite is the 305 in van/estate form - brilliant. A lot of their superior ride was due to the long wheelbase and quality of the dampers used - do they still make their own?

 

 

I'm not sure about that. In the seventies Citroen, Peugeot and Renault had the domestic market (yo) sewn up. They didn't really have to compete with cheap crap like Escorts in France, and the UK was a very good export market. 

I don't think Peugeot was struggling before the 205, but it's true that the 205 opened up another huge revenue stream for them.

 

Citroen went bankrupt not because the cars were unprofitable, but because of the CX development costs. They were still a smallish company remember.

[forddeliveryboy]

The development costs were the financial nail in the coffin, coupled with poor sales what with launching a big, thirsty-ish car in the fuel crisis when all people wanted was small and frugal.

 

Peugeot was losing a lot of money by the early 80s and had to borrow from the French govt, I think. Post '82, things started looking up financially.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/10/06/business/losses-forcing-change-in-french-auto-industry.html

[philibusmo]

If only British Leyland had bought them in 1974 rather than Peugeot.

 

I expect the results would have been hilarious.

[colino]

Isn't the announced demise of the system just a drip PR stunt for the forthcoming launch of the "new" DS brand cars, basically what they consider the top spec Citroens but without the Citroen Gear emblem on the front, a snazzy DS badge instead (to denote its new status), plus a reworked suspension system that will be, "devilishly complicated to maintain"?

[dollywobbler]

Eh? Surely the XM replaced the CX? Does seem odd that the XM never got Activa suspension though. 

[forddeliveryboy]

Eh? Surely the XM replaced the CX? Does seem odd that the XM never got Activa suspension though.

 

Has someone deleted a post? What's this all about?

 

 

If only British Leyland had bought them in 1974 rather than Peugeot.

 

I expect the results would have been hilarious.

 

They'd have all got pissed every lunchtime on Froggy wine then invented something even roomier than a Landcrab, in which to entertain the secretaries.

[richardmorris]

Odd isn't it? The activa almost seems to have been a dead end. But other manufacturers took on the idea of responsive suspension but via electronic not hydropnuematic means.

Sad really, one of the reasons I loved the suspension on the cxs etc was that it was purely physics in action. No electronics to go wrong or die. I did about 100,000 miles in my 2 cxs and only ever had one (low pressure) leak which was on the steering return pipe - quick strip of a dead bx provided a couple of feet of suitable lhm piping.

 

It comes down to production costs I think. If psa can save money using the same basic platforms then they will do so. Citroen was never very good at this, and going back to the traction pre war let development costs exceed their bank balance. Which is when Michelin stepped in. What possessed someone to buy maserati goodness only knows! Too much Vin rouge at lunch I expect?

[martc]

Isn't the announced demise of the system just a drip PR stunt for the forthcoming launch of the "new" DS brand cars, basically what they consider the top spec Citroens but without the Citroen Gear emblem on the front, a snazzy DS badge instead (to denote its new status),

 

I think the "DS" brand sounds a bit clumsy and it's always amusing to hear that France ought to make top spec cars because they used to in the past. DS has already been devalued by being used on relatively cheap "gimmicky" cars.

 

The concept of the original DS is largely understood by people who cannot afford/have little interest in these "aspirational" models. And the people who can afford them have not heard of DS's (in fact all they know is BMW or Audi).

 

Citroen would stand a better chance if they called their premium models Le Xus, Infinitee or, perhaps J'Aguar

[richardmorris]

Ds is being split off from Citroen from what I hear. Bit like Lexus.

[dollywobbler]

Has someone deleted a post? What's this all about?

 

 

Yes. A post does indeed seem to have been deleted. Shame, as XM ignoration aside, I thought it was an interesting read! I should have quoted.