In a desperate attempt to cultivate some serotonin I took a walk yesterday evening after work, and I decided to take a new route to see something new. Given you know, the state of the world right now, I was pondering life and started feeling a lump rise in my throat and some tears well up in my eyes. That’s when I turned a corner and caught a glimpse of a slammed tan hatchback with a European plate, and my woes instantly subsided. All I knew at first glance was that it was a Citroën, judging by its fender skirts, and that it appeared to be tethered to the concrete by a patchwork of spiderwebs and other neighborhood detritus, so I crossed the street to investigate further.
I didn’t want to trespass, so I only peeked at the rear and side of the timeworn wagon, but that was enough to make me smile and snap a few pictures. The initial excitement of stumbling across such a rare car paled in comparison to the feeling I got when I Googled the model, and found a Bring A Trailer ad for a 1973 Citroën GS 1220 Club that turned out to be this exact car.
Fallen from grace
The Bring A Trailer listing is from 2018 and shows a nicer car than the one that I stumbled across. Back then it was a mighty clean, high-riding hatchback with all-original parts, bodywork, and paint. The ad noted that the OEM muffler had a hole in it that needed replacing, and it seems like that job was done because the exhaust pipe now exits on the passenger side of the car. But beyond that, the one I spotted has the same French license plate and vintage stickers mounted in the bottom right of the wacky curved rear glass, so it must be the same car.
I mean no shade by calling it dilapidated; I know that life can get in the way of passion projects like keeping a 50-year-old Citroën on the road. Considering that I live in Southern California, the sun is really the only thing that might be doing damage to the car. Thankfully it’s not sitting in salt or anything actively terrible. It is tough to see how it has aged, but aging is a difficult reality to accept sometimes. Though its rusty spots have started dripping a bit, they were preexisting and documented in the ad; all in all, it still looks like it could be returned to its former glory with a good wash and wax.
One fabulously funky French car
There are some seriously funky aspects to this little Citroën, like its sliding bubble speedometer. I didn’t get to inspect it when I saw the car in person, but it’s such a cool feature, and one that I have never seen before. Being an old Citroën, it naturally has the brand’s iconic hydropneumatic suspension system that raises and lowers the car at the flick of a lever. Seeing it raised in the ad makes it look more ungainly than it looks in its low position, which I think looks pretty mean even with the cloak of dirt.
Another immediately obvious feature that snagged my attention was the rear window glass that curves into the roofline at the top. The ad illustrates this design quirk too, as well as the thoroughly flexible interior space in this little wagon. It looks to have a load floor that’s lower and flatter than any that I’ve ever seen before. The center portion of the rear bumper even lifts up with the trunk lid, which admittedly isn’t ideal for functioning as a bumper, but it seems like a boon for easy loading and unloading.
It is oh-so-seventies
I can’t say that I had ever seen a Citroën GS in person prior to finding this example, but it’s achingly cool. The tan-over-brown color scheme screams 1970s, as do the embossed brown vinyl door panels. Beyond that, the dashboard looks sufficiently space-age as classic French dashes are known to, and of course it has Citroën’s signature single-spoke steering wheel that adds to the salien allure.
The 1973 Citroën GS 1220 Club was powered by a 1.2-liter horizontally opposed four-cylinder engine that originally sent 60 horsepower and 64 lb-ft of torque to the front wheels through a four-speed manual transmission. An excerpt from a vintage Autocar road test found that the GS 1220 Club had a 0-to-60-mph time of 14.9 seconds, which isn’t as bad as I expected. There are some great drive-by videos on the Bring A Trailer ad where it seems like the seller was not afraid to push the limits of the ancient engine; I implore you to watch them.
In the 2018 Bring A Trailer ad, the brown Citroën indicated just 83,873 kilometers, which equates to about 52,000 miles — pretty low mileage for such an old car. The car was imported from England to the U.S. in 2001, and it had a clean California title. By the looks of it, the car hasn’t done much driving since it was purchased, so I am left to wonder what the mileage is now. It sold on December 24, 2018, which in another strange confluence, happens to have been my birthday.
I’m not sure of the story behind this French time capsule, but if the current owner happens to find this blog, please know that your car is wildly cool and seeing it brought me immense joy. I’m certain it will bring plenty of other people a spark of joy, too.
