The poor CC Cohort has been neglected as of late; there’s pages of terrific postings that I can’t all get to myself. Does anybody want to help post some of them? This Citroen CX Break posted by C.Hannaher is hard to ignore. It’s the ultimate station wagon, no matter what the color.
I wonder if anyone has ever done a woody CX break? The Paris Squire.
If I had this, I wouldn’t be complaining about the harsh ride. But would I trust it to take me 30 miles deep into the wilderness?
More CX goodness:
Perry Shoar’s excellent CC on the CX: Modernism’s Last Stand
As the suspension is adjustable in height, like Low Riders, it may be feasible to drive on rough roads if it’s set to max. The French term “break” comes from “shooting brake,” a vehicle intended for use by hunting parties & also used in the UK. So I would think it’s not unreasonable to talk of going off pavement in these, at least in France.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Height_adjustable_suspension#/media/File:HighCX.JPG
Driving to San Antonio, we saw Texans towing camo ATVs behind pickups to the Hill Country, so I suppose these fill the role of shooting brake.
If it ain’t a break, don’t fix it?
Love the CX in general and the wagon looks to have impressive capacity. The pink paint and whitewalls are certainly odd though–like they couldn’t decide whether they were going for a Kustom, or for late 80’s California style?
Chances are the car had been parked for a couple of hours and pressure in the hydraulic system bled back into the accumulator, leading to the car sitting in the all-the-way-down position. Perfectly normal on hydropneumatically-suspended Citroëns.
That said, the adage, “you can’t buy class but you can paint it pink” applies here. Not a fan of the paint job at all (and especially not the detail stripes on the hatch or hood), though it does look to have at least been reasonably well-done from what I can tell – however, I note that the badges didn’t make it back onto the rear after that was done.
Florida plate. Whoever painted it wanted to match the plastic flamingoes in his front yard.
The body gives me the same impression as an pretty woman wearing a dowdy, too-long skirt. Maybe in a different color…
The bled-down suspension does make it look sleek.
Florida plate, yes, but the photos appear to have been taken in Alexandria, Virginia, which makes it even stranger (as if that’s possible).
This looks like an actual European import, as opposed to one of the gray-market federalized CX’s that were imported in the late 1980s. When those were new, I actually rode in a CX gray-market wagon… that was the best car I’ve ever ridden in, and I became a Citroen fan for life. But I could do without the pink.
Both of you are correct, this is in front of the gasoline station across from Jerry’s Ford, but that’s a Florida “Transporter” plate which I understand is used for driving unlicensed vehicles. Over on Flickr I linked to an Autoweek article from September of 2015 describing the Tampa Craigslist post featuring this vehicle.
The mailing address is nominally Alexandria, but it’s actually in Fairfax County, not the City of A. /pedant
I rode/drove on that stretch of Little River Turnpike a lot in the 70’s and 80’s, and I didn’t recognize it. Jerry’s seems much closer to the road.
The current Citroën C5 is the last Citroën with hydropneumatic suspension, called Hydractive III+ these days. Below the wagon, the C5 Tourer.
The suspension system will be phased out, but Citroën announced it will get a worthy successor.
A good CX is still affordable, unlike a good DS.
With everything I’ve heard about the superior ride of this suspension, why haven’t other manufacturers imitated or at least licensed the technology (besides RR & Benz long ago)? Driver fatigue is a problem, esp. with distances in N. America & other expansive lands, not to mention the no. of folks with back pain. Look at the trouble heavy-truck makers go to on this account. And many roads here are falling into disrepair, further raising the importance of this.
Instead though, all we hear about now is cabin software, even though smart phones are often better at some things than dashboard systems, e.g. navigation.
The system is complicated and expensive to build. And speaking of heavy trucks, the 110,000 lbs truck below has hydropneumatic suspension too. Apart from Citroën and Ginaf, I don’t know any other auto- or truckmaker that offers hydropneumatic suspension these days.
I didn’t think big Cits cost much more than others. It seems buyers are willing to spend upwards of $50K these days for less innovative luxury models (with help from easy financing so beloved by Americans), so that’s plenty of headroom for higher manufacturing costs.
Americans used to care about a soft ride, & unlike Detroit, Citroën had that w/o compromising agility.
Let’s see what Citroën comes up with next year. Their new suspension system will be “revolutionary”. So I’ve read.
Most trucks just have full air suspension.
Thing is, it wasn’t just the hydropneumatic system that gave the cars their handling ability, though it did play a major part. The suspension as a whole was very well thought out, and its overall design contributed to their roadholding capabilities.
With that said: prior to the introduction of the Activa system, body roll on the cars with this suspension was alarming to anyone who didn’t understand that leaning in a curve wasn’t necessarily detrimental – provided that the car could keep up with the roll.
As a counterpoint to this from the same family (but which illustrates the point I’m making), look at the 2CV. No hydropneumatics, but similar tendencies towards lean-but-stick though clever suspension design.
Going to have to disagree that the hydropneumatic suspension was complicated – for the most part (on pre-Activa cars, at least) it was understandable by mere mortals and could be worked on in a driveway, though I will fully admit that access to some of the components could be a *complete* pain in the ass. That said, I’m also not implying that working on it would necessarily be either quick or easy for a home mechanic.
Expensive? Well… Yes. You’ve got me there. They never really were able to get production of it to a level where economies of scale came into play across the board.
It´s not so expensive as the cost can´t be balanced by a saving somewhere else. People stump up a grand for leather or extra accessories so I see a large margin for discretion in the actual final price.
Many here note that in the light of worsening roads that a soft suspension like the Citroen system would be good. I have a hydropneumatic Citroen, an XM and the one thing it hates is cracks and holes in the road. It´s brilliant at handling small, medium and large depressions and bumps but it hates sharp edges. And that´s what a badly maintained road surface has a lot of. Steel sprung cars seem to be the reverse.
http://www.driventowrite.com
A lot of luxury cars and SUV’s have air suspension today. Citroen is air/oil. Oddly, GM and Ford had some optional air suspensions in 1958 but they were mostly switched to steel springs pretty quickly.
The tailgate glass is awful, looks like it was stolen off a cheap RV. I suspect it’s flat glass too. In a normal color that might be a fetching car…in the nipple pink it’s just bad.
That’s not the original tailgate glass – there’s been some work done on the tailgate at some point.
Compare with the original below
The current glass is somewhat ugly, but if it broke I can just imagine how hard a replacement would be to source in the USA. Mind you, I always thought the Break’s tailgate would have been better with the glass going pillar-to-pillar a la Volvo 760 wagon:
PS Roger: you’re a big tease showing a Tatra beside the CX… 😉
“If I had this, I wouldn’t be complaining about the harsh ride.”
Can you made a Citroen ride harshly? (apart from having no fluid in the suspension)
Thanks for sharing the find C.Hannaher!
It’s entirely possible to make a Citroën ride harshly. Start with an LN/LNA and move forward through the progressively more PSA-derived models to the present day. That’s not to say that all of the Peugeot-based cars necessarily rode badly… But they lost a lot of the traditional Citroën feel.
Note that I say this as the owner of a Peugeot, and that one being a model that I wouldn’t necessarily characterise as being harsh-riding.
Yes – by setting the suspension level to the highest (wheel changing set up). But no sane person would do this:)
Was it the Pepto-Bismol Good Will Ambassador equivalent of the Wiener mobile?
The French used to make really awesome station wagons which looked like they were really maximising the added cubic feet, like the Renault 21.
Or the earlier Peugeot 505.
This is the last place I would have expected to find one of these cars but then – CC effect being what it is – I encountered this on my street. On Polish plates in Austria and it looks like it has been there for a while – someone obviously braved a drive longer than the proverbial 30 miles…
Side view
How to make an amazing shape comical. That hue is putrid. Great find, but.
Like a pink Converse Chuck Taylor All Star high-top. On wheels.
I created a PowerPoint about Citroen – Most Beautiful and Ugliest Cars. It can be downloaded from a link on this page:
http://www.rvharvey.com/carstuff.htm
Ralph
Awesome looking Citroen! It’s the best looking Citroen since the DS. It’s unforgivable that Citroen didn’t produce any cars for the North American market.
Why do you say that? Citroens were sold in the US until 1975, although not the CX.
I just happened upon this post. I used to own this wagon down in Florida. When I got it the back window was broken out and of course there are none here in the US. Was going to cost $2,500 to get one in which was a LOT more than I paid for the whole car. The glass I used is a Chrysler mini-van side window that opens. It also has the shaded sides which didn’t look too bad. I had to implant the entire metal surround to get it to work It was either this or having no glass.
The color, lol. I was making it into a weird Surf wagon and was going to put woodgrain sides and a roof rack on it with a surfboard I had painted to patch the car. Just never got around to it.
As for the suspension, it is controlled from the interior and on my car (this one) it did not bleed down, but was intentionally laid down for the look like I used to do when it went to car shows.
Another interesting note about it… the front hubcaps were cut from the centers of 1961 Imperial hub caps. 🙂 I get bored with “normal” cars and this is what I drive around on the beach these days.