The Citroën Traction Avant was an innovative front wheel drive automobile produced by the French manufacturer Citroën. About 760,000 units were produced from 1934 to 1957.
The Traction Avant, French for "forward traction", was designed by André Lefèbvre and Flaminio Bertoni in late 1933 / early 1934. While not the first production front wheel drive car - Alvis built the 1928 FWD in the UK, Cord produced the L29 from 1929 to 1932 in the United States and DKW
the F1 in 1931 in Germany - it was the world's first front wheel drive
steel monocoque production car. Along with DKWs 1930s models, the
Traction successfully pioneered front wheel drive on the European mass
car market.
The Traction Avant's structure was an arc-welded monocoque (unitized body). Most other cars of the era were based on a separate frame (chassis) onto which the non-structural body ("coachwork")
was built. Monocoque construction (also called Unit Body or "Unibody"
in the US today) results in a lighter vehicle, and is now used for
virtually all car construction, although body-on-frame construction remains suitable for larger vehicles such as trucks.
This method of construction was viewed with great suspicion in many quarters, with doubts about its strength. A type of crash test was developed, taking the form of driving the car off a cliff, to illustrate its great inherent resilience.
The
novel design made the car seem very low-slung relative to its
contemporaries — the Traction Avant always possessed a unique look,
which went from appearing rakish in 1934 to familiar and somewhat old
fashioned by 1955.
The suspension was very advanced for the car's era. The front wheels were independently sprung, using a torsion bar and wishbone suspension arrangement, where most contemporaries used live axle and cart-type leaf spring designs. The rear suspension was a simple steel beam axle and a Panhard rod, trailing arms and torsion bars attached to a 3-inch (76 mm) steel tube, which in turn was bolted to the "monocoque".
Since
it was considerably lighter than "conventional" designs of the era, it
was capable of 100 km/h (62 mph), and consumed gasoline / petrol only
at the rate of 10 litres per 100 kilometres (28 mpg-imp; 24 mpg-US).
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