| Description: This is one unique little buggy! We found this tarped behind a cottage near a Maine lake last summer. It had been sitting for "5, 10, well, maybe 15 years" said the sister of the owner. We pulled back the tarp and said "What is it?" The woman said (in her charming French accent) "It's a Citroen!" My associate and I looked at each other and thought "We don't thiiiinnnkkkk so!" But we were (partially) wrong and we will tell you why later. Anyway, after a day of contemplating we decided to snake the car out of the woods between the trees where it was resting high up on blocks and proceeded to load it onto the trailer. She said, (in a very charming French accent) "I've got all the papers somewhere and I will give them to you when I find them. My brother brought the car over from Europe years ago." Well, we politely thanked her and headed home pondering the situation and wondering "Why in hell did we buy this thing in the first place?" Because "We have to save it from the elements," I said, "Somebody has to do it."
The rest of the story. A few days later we discovered several body tags under the hood of the car. We called a good friend who specializes in Citroens and with the numbers he determined that the body was a 1952 11BL that was probably cut and shaped to a roadster body maybe using body parts from a Citroen 2CV and even a Citroen H Van. We also determined from the other tags that the builder was a Spanish firm. Hmmmm! Maybe there is more to the story than we realized. Six months later I called the woman who sold us the car. I ask if she found the paperwork. "Yes," she says (with her charming French accent) "I will be over in an hour with it." And so she drops off a pile of original paperwork from the 1970s (you really need to be able to read Spanish!) that show indeed the little roadster is an altered 1952 Citroen that had been made to go on a modified frame and with a volkswagen engine! All done in Spain by a firm that made these cars. How many were made or if these cars were special ordered (we believe this to be the case) we do not know. We haven't tried to start it yet and the body will need some repairs for minor rust but we believe after examining the records for maintenance that the VW engine was rebuilt as recent as 1986 and not used much after that. We do have one picture of the car that was given to us showing the car on the road back in the 1970s. Come take a look at this crazy little vehicle and decide if it's a project you want to undertake - or, we can do the work for you to get this little one of a kind roadster back on the road for summer fun! Just like our French friend, it's a charmer! |
