Piedmont Street Sighting - 1978 Citroën GS Pallas

Today marks the third day of the fabled countdown to Christmas.

On the third day of Christmas my archives give to thee:
A beige French shed,
Tuned Chevy LUV,
and a Park Lane down on the street.

Oh hon hon, French cars are weird. It's almost disappointing if you find one that isn't weird. The Citroën GS is unusual in that it looks like it would be a hatchback or liftback, but it's actually a fastback styled sedan with a small vertical trunk lid that hinges up like a garage door. The design with its sharp Kamm tail and sloping roofline was one of the most aerodynamic cars in the world in 1970 when it was introduced. The GS featured an advanced hydropneumatic suspension system based on the technology of the larger DS, as well as four-wheel disc brakes. It came with the Citroën trademark one-spoke steering wheel and a rotating drum speedometer. The latter was swapped out for conventional dials for the 1977 model year. For all that technology baked into the chassis, the GS came with an air cooled flat four sending barely 60 horsepower to the front wheels. And if you look closely at the grille, it looks like it still has a hole to insert a hand crank for emergency manual starting.

Danville Street Sighting - 1986 Citroën 2CV

One of the things I like about researching for this blog is deciphering license plates. The seemingly random letter and number patterns, various colors and shapes tell a story about the car they're installed on. Sometimes an online resource like California's smog test database yields the model year of an unusual older vehicle. But when it's an import from another country, especially a European model that was built for a long time with few obvious visual changes, having an original plate gives more clues about it. Case in point here with this Citroën 2CV I stumbled upon in Danville.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1965 Citroën DS 19

All right, I may have cheated some.
Last year a relative invited me to a meeting of his car club, the Arcane Auto Society, in San Francisco. This was what I found parked on the street outside the garage where the members met. It's a 1965 Citroën DS 19. It was not the only club member vehicle I photographed on the street that morning and I'll be happy to share the others with you at a later date. The club meeting functioned as an unofficial indoor car show and was a fascinating assemblage of everything from a right-hand-drive Reliant Regal three-wheeler with UK plates to a Peel Trident bubble car. Regrettably, those were off the street and within the boundaries of a car show and not eligible for blog features at the time, even though they were awesome. Even here, we have rules...

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1977 Citroën 2CV6

San Francisco is known for many things, good or bad, and one of those things is a high population of old French cars. To date, I've featured seven classic Citroëns, all of them spotted in the city of San Francisco. This '77 2CV is number 8. And there are more on the way in the future.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1970 Citroën DS

I'm not certain if this counts as a street sighting. I was leaving San Francisco's annual Fleet Week air show (at the same time as thousands upon thousands of other people as seen in these photos) and discovered this lovely green Citroën DS parked at Fishermen's Wharf. It turned out there was some sort of informal car show starting down at that end of the wharf, consisting mainly of lowriders and donk/high-riser cars on huge chrome wheels. Since the DS didn't match that description, and was parked on the same block where the Studebaker collector usually parks his cars, I felt more inclined to accept it as a legitimate street sighting. As difficult as it was to get clear pictures without hordes of people walking or biking past the car or milling around it, I feel like I've earned the right to feature it here!

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1970 Citroën Ami 8 Break

I've recently had a discussion with one of my readers regarding notable cars spotted near car shows. It begs a question -- what do you do if the car you just found is a local vehicle you've known about for years, searched for in vain, and only just found parked on the street conveniently around the corner from the 2011 California Mille? The Mille is a 3-day driving event held every spring, catering to well-heeled driving enthusiasts who cover 1000 miles of scenic California roads in their (generally) pre-1957 cars. Prior to the race, the participants' cars are put on display in front of the Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco. Occasionally someone drops in with an interesting vehicle and parks it near the show. In this case it's a 1970 Citroën Ami 8 Break, one of the most eclectic cars I've yet seen in The City.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1972 Citroën 2CV4

Fourth in my collection of San Francisco cars photographed and featured by both myself and by my friend Colin Stacy of The Automotive Way, is this 1972 Citroën 2CV4.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1984 Citroën 2CV Charleston

It seems that people with Citroën 2CVs attract shutterbugs like myself. The 2CV with its cartoonish proportions and roll-back fabric sunroof, especially a later-model Charleston special edition with its deep red and black paint, separated by a cheeky swoosh, is a magnet for attention. Millions of the little cars were sold worldwide over four decades, but America was hardly Citroën's best market. I suppose that when you're pinning your hopes on the small and underpowered but very advanced DS as a luxury car in a market dominated by chrome-laden V8 boats, it doesn't do well for the company's upscale image to field a 2-cylinder garden shed on wheels in the same dealership. It was no secret that the 2CV was intended to be a peasant's car from the beginning. Citroën didn't even actively advertise the Deux Chevaux here, and a lot of the cars that exist in the USA were imported later.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1969 Citroën DS21 Pallas

I've thus far been fortunate to come across not one but three Citroën DSs in San Francisco. Of those, I've been able to photograph two of them in depth. The first was the grey 1970 DS21 I spotted in the Lower Haight, another was a clean black example I caught driving in the east Mission near Potrero Hill (only got one or two shots of that while it was stopped in traffic). And then there was this one, found near the famous twists of Lombard Street on Russian Hill.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1952 Citroën 11CV Traction Avant

Every once in a while a car comes along that I genuinely don't know much about at all. I research the heck out of it to try to determine what it is. Usually it's an obscure European model that wasn't changed much during a long production run. Sometimes it's a car that was rare to start with in the American market and is only more rare now. And sometimes it's French.

San Francisco Street Sighting - 1970 Citroën DS21

After a few months, it's finally time to feature another French car. And I've had the good fortune to find one of the more important French cars, a Citroën DS.
San Francisco is a haven for French autos, bought by eccentric and supposedly cultured individuals who wanted something sexy, something different. They were often bought to make a statement. This fellow in the Lower Haight makes his statement with a 1970 Citroën DS21.