Quand vous avez dit «Citroën», vous avez tout dit*

*When you have said "Citroën, there is nothing more to say."

This was the advertising strapline used in the Sixties by Citroën Cars Limited in Britain to sell the ID and DS which were built in their factory in Slough, to the west of London.

Below the DS on show at the London Motor Show in 1955

The English Goddesses were different from the French cars in a number of respects. The most obvious being the steering wheel on the right with left hand gearchange on the ID.

Above Slough built ID 19 1961 (this car belonged to my Father)

Above Slough built ID 19 circa 1963

Furthermore, manual cars for the UK market, whether built in Slough or France always had a hand operated parking brake - only three pedals!

Once the Slough factory stopped building cars, they were imported from France but remained different in detail from the domestic product - ID and manual DS models had a handbrake and all cars were fitted with the pédalo footbrake and round rear lights.

`Well, what's so strange about that?' owners of British cars might ask. Late model LHD IDs had four pedals - the parking brake was foot operated. A conventional footbrake pedal was fitted instead of the pédalo.

Above ID 19 circa 1960

Above DS 19 circa 1959

Further additional differences were the lightly restyled front bumper - necessary to ensure that the number plate was vertical to comply with British law (this feature was retained when the first restyling took place in 1963) and the fitting of a Citroën badge on the bonnet.

The full story of Citroën's UK operations is told in John Reynold's book "From A to X ~ 75 years of Citroën in the UK "

Above Slough built DS 19 1964 - this car belonged to my Father

Below 1956 publicity - click to see large image

Below the production line at Slough

Unlike the Paris cars which were equipped with 6 volts electrics, the Slough cars used 12 volts from the outset.

Cars were equipped with Lucas lights - the rear clusters comprised 3 pairs of small round lamps - the outermost being the tail lamps, the middle pair being the stop lamps while the inner pair were reversing lamps.

Perhaps the greatest difference of all was to be found in the interior of the ID - the avant garde dash of the French cars was replaced by a slab of timber and the seats were upholstered in leather.

While the ID was viewed as a downmarket version of the DS in France, in Britain it was a luxury car in its own right, fitted with leather upholstery and DS wheel trims.

The DS sported a mirror image version of the French car's fascia, initially fitted with rectangular instruments above and later with round Smiths instruments below thereby anticipating the three dial layout used from 1969 in all markets.

The DS was extremely unusual in being a right hand drive car with right hand gearchange.

Above and right DW

Above right hand drive Cabriolet DS - although listed in the Slough catalogues, no cabriolets were built in Britain.

Above 1966 Slough built DS Pallas

Above a close up of the rear indicator fitted with Lucas light - compare this with the light from a French car of similar vintage below.

Above and below ID19 dashboard

Above and below the Slough factory was the first in the world to offer a manual DS, called the DW.

UK market Cabriolets were equipped with Lucas electrics although they were built in France.

Above dashboard from UK market, Paris built D Super - 1972

Slough Index