Description
Author: Gijsbert-Paul Berk, ISBN: 9781845842444, Pages: 144, Hardback, 2009, First Edition
The life story of a passionate automotive pioneer.
THE OPINION OF AN UNBIASED AUTOMOTIVE EXPERT
Bob Lutz is an internationally recognised authority on automobiles and the industry that produces them. He has worked for BMW, Opel, Ford and Chrysler, and was, at thetime of writing, revitalising General Motors. When the American internet news network
Edmunds.com interviewed him, he was asked: "Which, in your opinion, are the most significant automobiles ever made?" Lutz replied: "Well, how can you overlook the Model T, which put the nation on the road? How can you overlook the Volkswagen
Beetle, which did the same thing for Europe?
"And how can you overlook the 1934 Citroen? It had the world's first mass-produced unitised body. The world's first mass-produced application of front-wheel drive. It was the world's first car with independent double wishbone, longitudinal torsion bar
suspension at the front end, and transverse torsion bars and trailing link suspension at the rear end.
"For 1934, Citroen was 20 to 30 years ahead of its time: it defined the layout of generations and generations of cars.
"I still own a Citroen six-cylinder front-wheel drive car, which was the biggest front-wheel drive car in the world at that time. Mine is a '52, but its identical to a '34 because they didn't change the body during the war. In terms of ride and handling,
it is still a totally modern automobile. Every time I get in that car I'm hugely impressed when I think about what those Citroen engineers did in 1934"
