When I bought my 1963 Citroën ID19 two and a half years ago it had just run out of registration, but had a current Warrant of Fitness. A quick look under the bonnet and I shuddered: I hoped all those pipes knew what they were doing. A Pandora's Box of tanks, hoses and spheres; even the more familiar engine parts were in strange places. But at $1000 I had little to lose, if necessary I could probably get some money back by wrecking it. I nearly baulked at paying for 12 months registration, in case the thing blew up and I had done my dough. Needn't have worried, of course, it has never stood me up. It's not my only car, but I've done about 25 000 miles in it in 2 1/2 years.
On the way I have learnt a lot, by doing all the maintenance myself. I am no longer scared of it; man eventually subdues machine. The real benefit of belonging to a car club comes when you have an old car and you keep meeting people with a shed full of parts, a shelf of manuals, the knowhow to overhaul assemblies, or sometimes a radical "lateral thinking" solution to a problem. Here in Canterbury, New Zealand, we are blessed with such people. After spending another $1500, and a lot of hours, I now have a car that takes me through some real back roads without missing a beat.
Not that anyone is jealous, of course, it still looks pretty rough. A few dints and scratches in its murky beige body (much like the colour of the background of this page!), ripped seats, no headlining, holes in the carpet, I suppose you could say a "restorer's dream", rather than a "restorer's pride". Yet it was displayed at the Classic Car Show here in Christchurch last year, drawing considerable approval. We covered it in hand-painted rally stickers and water-based paint "mud", just back from the Monte-Carlo rally. No owner of an immaculate car would be willing to have their vehicle treated like that, so just remember that the rougher-looking cars do have their uses!
To me, the real attraction of the D is that it is so different. It looks different, it behaves different. On the road people stare, at the service station they ask questions. Friends make jokes, until I take them for a ride. My favourite trick is to accelerate hard towards judder bars, watching passengers brace themselves for a jolt they never receive.
Occasionally I catch a glimpse of the ID out of the corner of my eye; its own bulbous eyes return my glance. I burst into laughter: it can o nly be a spaceship. From the cockpit the view over the rounded bonnet is reminiscent of a late 1950s FC Holden, inside it is nothing like it. A wary alliance of English culture and French technology, with its thick red leather, wooden dash, and round dials, juxtaposed against the mushroom button, flat floor, and column gearshift still tight after 33 years (try to find that in a Holden half its age!).
Perhaps it's a strange comparison, the ID19 with a late 1950s Holden. But it leads me to what I think is the biggest D question of all, the ultimate D paradox. Maybe someone can suggest an answer. When it was released in 1955 the D looked clearly ahead of its time. But when you look at the design of modern cars its time seems to have passed: no-one, not even Citroën, would design a car that looked anything like it now. So somewhere in the last 40 years it had its time: when was that? Unless, of course, it stands aside from time, and this may well be the answer.
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