It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s an alien mothership! If you’ve ever spotted a Citroen DS out in the wild you may have asked yourself these questions because the car looks like nothing else on the road today – or even when this groundbreaking car hit the road back in the 1950s… yes, it’s that old.
Plenty of vehicles have debuted some pretty revolutionary features, but it’s a safe bet that none introduced as many all at once as this futuristic Citroen. The car featured an adjustable hydraulic suspension system that provided a pillowy-soft ride – and numerous other benefits – later models offered swiveling headlamps that turned with the steering wheel, and the DS even had power steering and brakes, big features for its time.
And all this innovation was wrapped in a sleek and unusual but also strikingly beautiful design, one that was so fundamentally sound that the car remained in production for 20 years – longer, in fact, than the Ford Model T.
In the episode of “Drawing Conclusions” embedded below, Jason White, car designer and professor at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit points out the important elements of this Citroen’s styling, explaining why the car is such a design legend, not only a technical masterpiece. Check out the AutoEsoterica YouTube channel for more informative content like this and much more.
AutoEsoterica is home to the under-appreciated and fantastical in car culture. Frontman Craig Cole is a life-long car enthusiast whose videos range from the restoration progress of his vintage Fords to design analysis and industry insights from contributors Jason White and Jim Hall.
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