Wednesday 3rd July 1935
French engineer and industrialist who introduced Henry Ford’s methods of mass production to the European car industry, Andre Citroen died aged 57. Although not an automobile enthusiast, he was a marketing genius. Citroêns still stand out from the rest. Different – sometimes it seems for the pure pleasure of being different for its own sake – wayward, capricious, bizarre, irritating, yet occasionally lit with flashes of engineering genius so pure that you stop short and wonder why on earth car designers persist in doing things any other way, Citroêns can’t be confused with anything else in the automotive world. If God had meant us to drive around in identical tin boxes, he wouldn’t have created André Citroên.
