Never heard of an Oltcit Club? Welcome to the Club! I did recognize it for something, but something else; in fact the same thing that Yohai Rodin, who posted it at the Cohort first thought it was: A Citroen Axel. I’m sure you did too. But no; this is a genuine Oltcit Club, made in Romania, but rather obviously a Citroen design, although it’s unique from actual Citroens, like the seemingly similar Visa. And when some of these were exported to Western Europe from 1984 – 1990, it was badged as a Citroen Axel.
Now that name “Citroen Axel” turns out to be rather ironic, because some of the later versions of this car actually had a Renault 12 front axle, as well as wheels. Even with out that little twist, this car is an oddball from beginning to end, and has quite a story.
image via citroenet.org.uk
It dates back to 1965, when Robert Opron was given the big challenge to develop a replacement for the 2CV. A series of very space-efficient designs ensued.
A later offshoot of this 2CV replacement project resulted in the Project Y, during the time Fiat was involved in Citroen. It used a Fiat 127 platform.
After Peugeot took over Citroen in 1973, it was decided to ditch those underpinnings, and build the Visa (above, posted at the Cohort by Charkle the 2nd), as it was now called, on the Peugeot 104 platform, and available with either a Citroen air-cooled boxer twin or the Peugeot 104’s four cylinder.
image via Wikipedia
But in a rather odd turn of events, the Project Y was sent to Romania, where Citroen had a partner, Oltcit. And there it went into production, with either the 652cc boxer twin, or the 1129 or 1299cc boxer fours from the Citroen GS.
Since the Oltcit didn’t sell well enough in Romania, and failed to generate any real profits to recoup the investment, it was decided to rebadge it as the Citroen Axel and to sell in Western Europe, Canada and a few other markets.
It may have seemed odd to bring this back to compete with the Citroen Visa, but the Axel was strictly a three-door, and it was a bit cheaper too. And since the Visa was only built as a five-door, and sales weren’t all that strong, Citroen was happy enough to throw another car into that critical market segment.
Oh, the Renault 12 axle and wheels? These were only used on the last two years of Oltcit Club production, a version called RM, which supposedly stood for “Romanian Improved”, and used Renault 12 front axles, brakes and wheels.
Thanks for giving the Visa some attention. For reasons I’m not entirely certain of, these have long been one of my favourite Citroens. Never found one that made me take the jump into ownership, but drove a few and thought that they were a reasonable approach to a modernised 2CV.
One addendum to the Oltcit Axel saga: only the Romanian-built vehicles were available as 3-door models; all Visas (except for the van) were produced in 5-door form.
There is one thing I’m curious about, though: you mentioned that these were sold in Canada for a time. I’d never heard this before; do you happen to have any of the details regarding that?
I think you’re missing a key point: the Oltcit Club/Axel were essentially totally different vehicles than the Visa. The Visa was based on a Peugeot 104 platform, the Club/Axel had its own specific platform and body, even if it looks somewhat similar to the Visa.
So yes, all Clubs/Axels were only 3 door; and yes, all Visas were all 5 door.
Canada? I think it said so in Wikipedia, but I can’t vouch for the accuracy of that.
Correct observation 🙂
I can see how my reply may have given the impression that I was confused over the relation of the Axel to the Visa; that wasn’t my intention (or understanding), and I put it entirely down to a lack of proofreading my comment before posting on my behalf.
Anyway, I’ve put in a request to a couple of Citroen folks in Canada for info regarding if the Oltcit was ever sold there. While I don’t know if this will result in anything definite, having run across the same info in Wikipedia as you did it would be great to turn up sales literature, etc. to fill in the blanks a bit.
I understand. A lot of obscure European cars were sold in Canada, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they were, but let us know what you find.
So if I”m reading this right, the Club was actually on a version of the Fiat 127 platform? What an odd pan-European hybrid!
It does end up looking rather like a 3-door Visa though. And better-proportioned, too.
A neat little car I’d never heard about .
Too bad Americans are not ‘ into ‘ small cars .
I had a1959 Citroen 2CV for a while , a bit slow but a terrific transportation device , cheap as dirt to run and bullet proof to boot .
-Nate
It’s actually better looking than the Visa in my opinion. I saw a few Romanian registered ones here (Vienna) after Romania joined the EU; usually owned by construction workers. They got ditched as soon as the owner saved enough to buy some “decent” West-European car. I did not know they had the GS unit available, should have had a reasonable performance with one of those (I would not have wanted to travel from Bucharest to Vienna in the 2 cyl variety, there is slow and there is… very slow).
I’ve always thought the early Visa was the ultimate “sad face” car. To me it looks old, tired, and like it’s seen some things it would rather forget.
Performance from the 2 cylinder must be pretty much identical to a 2CV. Wikipedia gives it a 29 second 0 – 60mph.
The flat-twin in the Visa was slightly larger than that in the 2CV at the time (652cc vs. 602cc, respectively), but the Visa weighed substantially more than a contemporary 2CV: roughly 1800lbs. vs. 1400lbs. However, the Visa’s aerodynamics were better than the 2CV’s, and differences in gearing and available power helped it have roughly the same 0-60 time as the 2CV.
We once cut a Visa bought for next to nothing down into an open pick-up; without any real reinforcement of the chassis, opening the rear doors or removing the tailgate was a terrible idea.
I remember seeing a few in Piran and Portoroz (Slovenia). To me they were nice looking cars, more so than those R-12 based Dacias.
You probably saw Citroen Visas??? In ex-Yugoslavia only these had been marketed by the then Citroen assembly plant “Cimos” in the ex-Socialist Republic of Slovenia one of the six republics in the former federation of YU. As the austrian lad said Oltcit Clubs were only marketed in Romania and in few other ex-Warsaw pact member countries. Yugoslavia had been a so called non-aligned country and while E.U. didn’t existed then, the market differentiations and customs legislations were quite rigid between every single country on the continent. So some models may never reached their neighbouring markets, either their manufacturing plants were quite close to the borders… Maybe very few Axels and Clubs reached the yugo-market but I saw none of them… Only Visa, GS, GA, GSA, GX, 2CV6, Dyane, Ami 6 and 8, ID19, DS20 and 21, CX, ZX… During early ’90’s when “Cimos” as a factory became obsolete because of fast changing regional politics/economics so they discontinued their own manufacturing…and the market went “free”. From then the newer Citroens are simply and freely imported from France…
If you saw them recently, the reason you found them in that part of Slovenia was not because they were license-built in a nearby factory – but because in all other parts of the country the tin worm destroyed practically all cars from the 80s and earlier. But Piran and Portoroz are located in the coastal southwestern part of the country with a Mediterranean climate – a Slovenian California of a kind, where there is more sunshine than in other regions, and most importantly it almost never snows, therefore rust is not such an issue there.
The Visa was frankly ugly (and that’s from someone who grew up in a proud Citroen family…) but it was a good little car. My mother had a 1st-generation red one, very similar to the one pictured here. With the boxer twin. And a polka-dot seat fabric (hey, why not). It was great fun to drive. NOT a chick magnet, though (I tried).
Paul are you sure the Visa was a sales dud? The 1st generation certainly was, but I think the facelifted 2nd gen fared better. I don’t have the figures here but I remember seeing quite a few of them around in the 1980s and 1990s (as opposed to the Axel, which arrived too late on the market anyway and which everybody viewed as a superfluous, less practical Visa imitation). Citroen even made a little Visa-based delivery van called the C15 which stayed in production until as late as 2006. Visas (not to mention Axels) have almost disappeared from the street scene in France today but C15s are still everywhere.
Anyway, congratulations for even remembering the Axel, which possibly deserved a better fate. Or not 🙂
Probably “dud” is too strong. I don’t think it ever quite fulfilled Citroen’s ambitions to create a true hit 2CV successor. But that was probably not in the cards. But it did reasonably well enough. I’ll change that word, as it’s misleading.
Of course I’ve heard about Oltcit Club. One of my buddies (who is a nephew of famous Andy Vajna) had one in the early ’90’s. All I can remember about this lil’ car that my first impression was “a Caricature Version of the GS / GSX / GX / GA”. When we took our place in the Oltcit Club I remember that -as we are both broad-shouldered lads- one of us had to open the lateral window and put out one arm because of lack of space 🙂 If it was technically reliable or not? I don’t remember… He got rid of it quite quickly…
Great find, and reminds I have some Visa and 2CV CC material to complete.
At the time, there was some magazine speculation about a Citroen Coupe, based on shots of the Axel. You’ll still occasionally see one in France, but never in the UK – I’m guessing they were all LHD
Cool, didn’t see one of those in years! These things were somewhat common in western Europe in the early ’90s but back then I didn’t realise they were not like other Citroëns. Don’t think anybody who owned one did either and if the dealer – the local one in my town sold Citroëns – was even aware of it, I doubt they’d share that knowledge with the customer.
Although the ugly Visa was a much larger contributor to it this thing made me, a small impressionable kid at the time, dislike Citroëns for many years – noisy, ugly and, since the local car dealer was a Citroën dealership, way too common and always filled with grumpy old people (DSes and the like were rare and couldn’t mitigate it. Back then, I thought of the CX as scary but I’ve come to appreciate it now. Not so with the Visa).
Still, nice to see one of those more forgotten memories still running (in Prague by the looks of it?).
Looks like a baby Saab 900!
So cool. I’ve always had a “crush” on the Oltcit/Axel for being a real Citroen, unlike that impostor Visa. And with the GS’s flat-four in a lighter, smaller car, it may have been one of the only small Citroens of indigenous design with respectable straight-line speed. That’s always been my impression from 21st century America, anyway.
My dad owned one for 15 years in Romania. It was quite a reliable car, never broke down in the middle of the road.
I remember he was proud to show me how easy the Oltcit was overtaking the R12.