Goddess on a Hiway

An excursion into the new wave world of the Citroën DS

A year ago we were driving through the country lanes near my partner’s mum’s house and speeding past in the other direction was a series of vintage Citroëns. For a moment it felt like we’d fallen into a French New Wave film, although I looked in vain for Alain Delon or Anna Karina. Oh yeah, they have a Citroën Car Club up at the rec said Adam. There was a 2CV rattling past like a tin of spares carelesly bolted together, and the corporate glamour of a 1970s CX cruising by. But mostly it was Citroën DSes, those super-sleek sharks surfacing from the midcentury deep. Powder blue, white, plum and black, each car that flew by felt like a miracle. Seeing them out here, on the narrow roads of the Buckinghamshire countryside, was as close as I could get to the feeling of seeing them unveiled in 1955, when the world had never witnessed anything quite like them.

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