Citroen Hydropneumatique 1954 - 2018 +++ An attempt at a tribute thread +++ Caution: André's Asylum inside!

[Junkman]

It's now official, the last Shitrun pissing alien blood all over your drive, the hard shoulder of the motorway and your company car park is going to be built next year,

finally relegating a pointless, unnecessary, grossly overhyped and lethally dangerous answer to a question nobody asked to the confines of the rubbish bin of history,

where it already belonged 64 years ago.

[tooSavvy]

24 minutes of my life I'll never live again

 

TS

[Guest Hooli]

I'm not sure you've got the meaning of 'tribute' quite right.

[Junkman]

I learned English from a book.

[Ghosty]

No more LHM - have they worked out how to make hover cars, or are they just going to badge engineer Insignias instead?

[wuvvum]

24 minutes of my life I'll never live again

 

TS

It took you 24 minutes to read Junkman's post?  Bloody hell, and I thought I was a slow reader.

[Timewaster]

I think 👻y might be on to something.

 

And its not hover cars.

[Guest Hooli]

Well the frogs have perfected self snapping springs now, they don't need a specialist suspension system to ensure it fails once a month anymore.

[billyboy406v6]

So cars that proceed without alien blood systems never fail ? Now that is a comforting thought !

[chaseracer]

 

[Longblackcoat]

I have never, ever had a problem with Citroen hydraulic suspension. Many people can say this because they've never owned/sat in/travelled in an LHM-equipped Citroen, and it would therefore be impossible for them to experience such an issue. Fair enough. But that's not me.

 

You see I, on the other hand, have owned a bevy of BXs, have travelled circa 200,000 miles in them, and have never had a leak, a failure, a blowup .... nothing. I did change the spheres a couple of times because maintenance, true, but at £35 a corner that's hardly a killer. And the ride was just brilliant.

 

Sad to see them disappear.

[Cleon-Fonte]

 pointless, unnecessary, grossly overhyped and lethally dangerous answer to a question nobody asked

 

A certain Spen King of the Solihull area obviously disagreed with you there, developing a much improved version of the system that completely eradicated pitch, roll and negative camber without the use of any complicated electronics. Below is a vehicle so fitted taking a corner at speed:

 

 

Sadly a similar system for the P8 died with it and by the time the SD1 came along BL's cost accountants had forced the engineers to accept crappy old Macpherson struts and a live rear axle.

[Junkman]

I guess they had a much better reason for scrapping the idea than merely cost considerations.

[artdjones]

Our main car for the last 5 years has been a 2005 C5 1.6 HDi.All the issues on the car have been to do with the conventional parts of the car.The only hydraulic parts replaced have been 1 rear cylinder gaiter costing about €20 and a front strut return pipe costing €15.Thats after about 80000 miles on rough Irish country roads.So I think the durability of Citroen suspension is ok.We've also had four BXs and two Xantias in the family without undue problems.Any there have been have usually been caused by abuse and neglect by previous owners.

[D Spares & Tyres]

Had several LHM Citroens. Never had a problem with the suspension.

 

Still a pointless complication though, and conventional springs seem to give a better all round ride

[dollywobbler]

Still a pointless complication though, and conventional springs seem to give a better all round ride

 

I thought such statements were utter bullshit until I drove a Jaguar XJ. Oh, and a Citroen C5 Mk3 with coil springs. However, having electrically adjustable headlamps in case you're carrying something heavy in the boot? What sort of half-arsed mish-mash is that? Far better to have suspension that will keep the car level regardless of load. Oh, and I still miss the novelty of a car that rises up before you drive away (a feature they stupidly dropped to appear more conventional). That reason also saw them ditch the actually-comfortable double-wishbones of the DS, GS and CX and replace them with the utterly inferior Macpherson strut, which is why later hydro Cits ride so terribly badly.

[egg]

French exceptionalism: mintel, talky Nudie films, existentialism and LHM, all sadly becoming things of the past!

[MrDuke]

It's now official, the last Shitrun pissing alien blood all over your drive, the hard shoulder of the motorway and your company car park is going to be built next year,

finally relegating a pointless, unnecessary, grossly overhyped and lethally dangerous answer to a question nobody asked to the confines of the rubbish bin of history,

where it already belonged 64 years ago.

 

 

Jeez, at least try and put some effort into trolling. Even K*t*e H*pk*ns can do better than that.

[Skizzer]

That is very sad news.  There is a great deal more to mourn with the passing of Citroen than hydropneumatic suspension:  a company that took risks in both styling and engineering, that pioneered the democratisation of the car with the 2CV; with aerodynamic design; with primary safety with castering steered wheels as well as self-levelling suspension (remember the advert where a GSA blew a tyre and steered straight between two trucks?);  with the quieter and more efficient double helical gear, of course;  and with front wheel drive, which I understand to be very popular although not particularly so with me.  I'm not saying Citroen invented these things, not even the gear teeth, but it did move the game on significantly.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6Kfd1Um4YI

 

They have made some beautiful cars, too - the SM and CX are my favourites - and some that are so heroically ugly (Ami) that we have to love them for that too.  This makes the dreary blandness of the Xsara-era all the more execrable.

 

I shall miss Citroen, and it is being killed off for the worst of reasons - a history of poorly conceived marketing strategies.  Poor strategic moves, to be fair, are also a defining characteristic of the company since the eponymous Andre's time.

[Guest Hooli]

The Xsara is one of the few chitruns I don't think is deliberately more ugly than similar aged cars.

[Cleon-Fonte]

Have a video of a CX merrily trouncing a pair of its German rivals and - inexplicably - a Fiat Croma during some high-speed testing.

 

[Cleon-Fonte]

Still a pointless complication though, and conventional springs seem to give a better all round ride

 

On most roads I'd probably agree with you, however it's at speed on poorly surfaced roads with repeated large undulations where the system really comes into its own. Local to me is the Snake Pass which is such a road, and nothing I've driven over it so far has beaten my BX with its supposedly crap suspension. Those cars that ride as well soon reach their limits as the dampers can no longer keep things in check, whilst anything with firm suspension may as well not bother, it will handle no better and will rapidly lose its composure as soon as the going gets tough. Meanwhile as far as the BX is concerned the road beneath it is flat.

 

That's not to mention the fact that most steel sprung cars do without such things as self-levelling and ride height adjustment, as well as oleopneumatic suspension's numerous other advantages.

[Zantimisfit]

Obviously Citroen feel that the discontinuation of its innovative suspension system is more than compansated for by fitting their latest products with rubber incontinence pads stuck all down the sides.

 

Traction Avant, 2CV, DS, GS, SM, CX etc........Picasso, Cactus. Well I, for one, am impressed. Evolution in reverse.

 

p.s dont dislike the Cactus as such, its a bit odd which is good. Just not convinced it represents progress

[chaseracer]

...it's at speed on poorly surfaced roads with repeated large undulations where the system really comes into its own...

 

Viz. most non-autoroute French roads until the early 1980s...

[chaseracer]

In 1982, we went on holiday to Brittany with another family.  This was quite an adventure back then.  Their Renault 16TX coped admirably with the very variable road surfaces - our Hillman Avenger was virtually undriveable at times!

[rml2345]

I've only had one hydro-Cit, the Xantia with it's deeply compromised PSA cop-out which made the front dreadfully crashy. However, the ride and handling on fast A-roads was absolutley tremendous and you suddenly had confidence to chuck it round bends at increasingly silly speeds to the point of running out of testicles before running out of grip. Self levelling is also brilliant and the pressure hydraulic system endowed Hydro Citroëns with superb brakes. Having had a very brief spin in a CX I can only imagine how much better the Xantia could have been with a properly engineered set up.

It was by no means a perfect system of course and you could get Citroën type ride with a very well engineered steel set up but it made the car world a much more interesting place and I for one will miss it for that reason more than any. Like it or not it was different and that seems to be a dirty word in car engineering nowadays.

[paulplom]

I'm sure the xantia held the record for the nurburgring at some point

[D Spares & Tyres]

I have mixed feeling about it

 

On certain roads it would confuse the XM suspension. Particularly humpback bridges where it felt like the wheels would disappear into the arches and it would bottom the car out.

 

I do like the way you could put half a tonne in the Xantia estate though..

 

Just before I scrapped my C5 I gave it loads of abuse on some dirt roads at daft speeds and yes I agree it came into its own then

 

I now have an early sinker Xantia and like it as a novelty. Can be a bit tedious waiting for the glow plug light then for it to rise if you are late for somwhere though.

 

Oh and its great fun coming back from somewhere and finding it has sunk so that the spoiler is now touching the kerb...

[D Spares & Tyres]

Dont dislike the Cactus as such, its a bit odd which is good. Just not convinced it represents progress

 

There's one by me in a horrible green colour. Has a look of a mutant ninja turtle about it

[Shep Shepherd]

For me, the USP of any postwar Citroën above 2CV size is suspension hydromatique. Kudos to the company for daring to be different engineering-wise for so long.