Hi everyone I’m Jack and I’m a Citroënaholic

I don’t know what came first: my affection for France, or my fascination for rusty old Citroëns. Either way, each emotion feeds the other. But one of them, over the years, has become what my close friends call a little problematic.

It started young. As a kid I befriended the owner of the Citroën garage in the local town, Monsieur Vaissière. He had the haircut and demeanour of Killer Bob from Twin Peaks, but he also had a collection of 1960’s road bikes we’d rent on holiday. More importantly for this story, he had an armada of cars lined up in the forecourt, and the striking angles, shapes and sizes of those vehicles burned themselves into my brain, there to stay.

The first car I had was the car I never had: a Citroën Ami 6, just the weirdest vehicle you’ve ever seen. Monsieur Vaissière offered me one for free when I was 15, but my Dad (wisely?) refused permission. He thought I should concentrate on my Latin homework rather than on rebuilding rusty barrel brakes. The yearning regret still aches. The Ami 6 is built on a version of the 2CV chassis and motor, but has a body shape unlike any car you’ve ever seen. It’s like a mixture between a dinghy and a Lincoln Continental – its ‘z-back’ rear window seems at once impossibly French but also totally American. I dare you not to love it.

The all-time classic 2CV was the first car I ever drove. Again, Monsieur Vaissière was behind the purchase, and our sky blue open-topped shopping trolley with an engine still to this day is our summer holidays vehicle of choice, and vehicle of joy.

But the real trouble began with the DS. Just the most beautiful car ever built, the DS is so iconic it was the topic of a Roland Barthes essay when it was first unveiled. How French can you get. I bought a gold 1970 DS21 at a police auction when the previous owner disappeared in suspicious circumstances; all I knew about him was his name from the car papers, and an unusual collection of sun glasses in the glove box. I paid roughly the cost of a bicycle for the car, less than the cost of 2 weeks rental of a crappy Ford Fiesta, and I never looked back.

The sheer modernism of the DS is hard to fathom now, 75 years after it came out, but what I can tell you is that driving around France in my mid 20s in a rusty gold DS was a blissful existence. When she broke down, which happened fairly regularly, I would pull over, flip open the lid, and wait for help. It never took long. In those days, everyone had some kind of relationship with the DS, from their childhood, their uncle, their first car, their first kiss. And so people would stop, help me out, show me fixes, tell me stories. It was almost more fun breaking down than driving around.

But all good things come to an end, and I didn’t have the funds to protect her against the inevitable rust. I sold her to an Italian and she left on a truck for Abruzzo, along with a part of my heart and a deep reservoir of memories from my youth. Siiiigh.

Time for the rebound: meet the CX Break, aka Ghostbusters. The ugliest beauty on the road. I picked one up for pittance from a guy who knew a guy, and driving it back across France, once again I found myself enthralled by the amazing space-ship floating ride provided by the unique Citroën hydraulic suspension. The mechanics of the Citroën from the DS onwards mean that they tick and hum and hiss and purr as they turn over, with the gear box, steering, brakes and suspension all powered by high pressure hydraulic pumps. That’s right – they’re not just weird on the outside.

With ancient old rust buckets, the experience of buying and going to fetch the car is a big part of the adventure, and so my trip to meet Eric in the Pyrenees to pick up his deceased father-in-law’s 1984 CX Prestige limousine was the beginning of a friendship we maintain to this day. I lunched with him and his 97 year old mother, before settling into the plush leather interior of my new beast and cruising through the hillsides of Gascony back home, grinning maniacally. What a car. Eric said she lived all year round in a garage, used only in the Summer to tow a speedboat down from the Loire to St Tropez (there’s a mighty engine under the hood). That’s my kind of back story.

Again, I paid less than the cost of a transatlantic flight, and it would have been worth it if she’d fallen apart that same evening, just for the one ride. But she didn’t, and in fact right now she’s sporting a new paint job. Love knows no bounds.

I’m not going to try to persuade you that these are the best cars in the world. I’m confident in my own conviction (I was going to say fetish), and along with a long line of presidents, I feel I’m keeping decent company.

But each time I fire up the engine and head off not knowing if I’ll arrive, I know I’ve swapped efficiency and certainty for style and adventure, and I know I’m putting myself in the hands of fate and the friendliness of the people I’ll meet along the way. For the sheer consistent generation of memories and emotions, these toys have proved unbeatable over 30 years of pottering.