André Citroën

Born in Paris in 1878, André-Gustave was the 5th and last child of Jewish parents,^[1][2][3] diamond merchant Levie Citroen from the Netherlands and Mazra Kleinmann (of Warsaw, Poland). He was a cousin of the British philosopher Sir A. J. Ayer.
The Citroen family moved to Paris from Amsterdam in 1873. Upon arrival, the diaeresis was added to the name, changing Citroen to Citroën (a grandfather had sold lemons, and had changed the consequent name Limoenman "lime man" to Citroen (Dutch for "lemon")). His father committed suicide when André was only six years old.

His grave in Paris

André was a graduate of the École Polytechnique in 1900. During World War I, he was responsible for mass production of armaments. André founded the Citroën automobile company in 1919, leading it to become the fourth-largest automobile manufacturer in the world by the early 1930s.
He died in Paris, France, of stomach cancer in 1935 and was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, the funeral being led by the Chief Rabbi of Paris. In 1992, the Parc André Citroën public garden in Paris was named after him.
In 1998 he was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in Dearborn, Michigan.

Source : wikipedia

Fiat 500

The Car That Will Always be an Italian Icon

The Fiat 500 could sit 4 people comfortably!

Of the many Italian automakers out there, Fiat has been around for more than a century and is still running strong with 16 cars currently available in their lineup. Fiat came to be back in 1899 and has had many classic and revolutionary cars, but there has been one car that Fiat has made that tops all of them, and that is the Fiat 500 introduced on July 4th, 1957.
The idea of a small, efficient car is a common idea for sure, but when Fiat decided to create their own version of this idea, something magical happened in the process. The new category of the "city car", or a car so very small and made for heavily populated areas, came to be. The Mini Cooper was another example, yes, but that would not happen for another two years, so technically the Fiat 500 was the first small car that maximized interior space.
Its dimensions are 9 feet 9 inches long, 4.3 feet wide and 4.3 feet tall! Its wheelbase is 6 feet and it only weighed 1,100 pounds, which is unprecedented for a car these days in the USA! To give you another example, the newest Honda Accord now weighs in at 3,100 lbs! This may not mean much at first, but when you realize the lighter a car, the more fuel efficient it is, because the less weight is being pushed, thus improving nearly all aspects of the car.

Citroen Traction Avant

The Traction Avant, French for "front wheel drive", was designed by André Lefèbvre and Flaminio Bertoni in late 1933 / early 1934. While not the first production front wheel drive car – Alvis built the 1928 FWD in the UK, Cord produced the L29 from 1929 to 1932 in the United States and DKW the F1 in 1931 in Germany – it was the world's first front-wheel drive steel monocoque production car. Along with DKWs 1930s models, the Traction successfully pioneered front-wheel drive on the European mass car market.

Traction Avant monocoque

The Traction Avant's structure was a welded monocoque (unitized body). Most other cars of the era were based on a separate frame (chassis) onto which the non-structural body ("coachwork") was built. Monocoque construction (also called Unit Body or "Unibody" in the US today) results in a lighter vehicle, and is now used for virtually all car construction, although body-on-frame construction remains suitable for larger vehicles such as trucks.
This method of construction was viewed with great suspicion in many quarters, with doubts about its strength. A type of crash test was conceived, taking the form of driving the car off a cliff, to illustrate its great inherent resilience.^[2]
The novel design made the car very low-slung relative to its contemporaries – the Traction Avant always possessed a unique look, which went from appearing rakish in 1934 to familiar and somewhat old fashioned by 1955.

Classic car wiring

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