The last of the line (1)

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This week features two special celebrations of people’s cars and the first of them is the 2CV. Why? Well, the very last of them rolled off the production line on 27 July in 1990 at 16:00 precisely. Not in Levallois, France, where production had ended in 1988 but in Mangualde, Portugal, where the 2CV line continued to produce cars until that day. This as demand faded and Citroen needed to make place for other cars. Oh, and there were some environmental issues plus the poor performances in crash-tests.

Although production came off the ground from 1948 onwards, 2CV prototypes had been built before the war. We showed you some fascinating film footage of these cars recently (here). There are, of course, also moving images of that very last day of 2CV production plus the actual rolling off the line of the last car, followed by factory workers and a brass band (here). What strikes us is that a Citroen AX is right behind it. Don’t look back, look forward, it seems to say!

Since its debut in 1948, a total of 5,114,959 2CVs was produced worldwide and the last car, built today 27 years ago, resides with an enthusiast in the Alsace region today. In France after all…

(Words editor, picture l’Automobile ancienne)

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