I’M ON THE ROAD AGAIN [556]

148 inches versus 206 inches

Nearly two years since Jaguar Cars announced an even-more-upmarket rebrand under the phrase “copy nothing”, and ten years since I first wrote about the Citroën 2CV, a car as far away from a Jaguar as you can get, two new cars were announced within a week of each other.

On Tuesday 6th October, the Jaguar Type 01, a four-door, four-seater grand touring saloon, and an evolution of the Type 00 coupé concept shown in 2024, was unveiled by JLR (Jaguar Land Rover) at an event in New York, with a starting price of £129,995. Five days later, Stellantis unveiled their own concept car, a Citroën 2CV reimagined as a modern supermini-sized city car, alongside a new version of the “Fourgonnette” van, aiming to be among the cheapest of available new cars, a tenth of the Jaguar’s cost, when the eventual production model goes on sale in 2028.

The timing of these cars’ launches was not the only reason for me considering them together, as the owners of both Jaguar and Citroën are using these new cars to reposition our perception of these brands. Jaguar is deliberately being pushed away from “premium mass market” Mercedes-Benz and BMW customers towards Bentley, Aston Martin and, well, Range Rover drivers, with an imposing design and price to match. Meanwhile, the outright quirkiness and excitement of Citroën car design arguably began fading after it merged with Peugeot in 1976, before becoming part of the even-larger Stellantis in 2021 – the current Citroën C3, sitting above the 2CV in size and also originally a 2CV-inspired design, can also be bought as both a Vauxhall/Opel Frontera and Fiat Grande Panda, with cosmetic and dashboard changes separating them.

Importantly, both the Type 01 and 2CV only have electric drivetrains. Jaguar had already stated their range would be electric-only by 2025, by which time they had stopped production to prepare, while European emissions rules had added enough to the cost of producing a new petrol-driven small car to make their price too high to be viable, already ending in the production of cars like the Peugeot 108, Citroën C1, Volkswagen Up! and even the Ford Fiesta. However, the Type 01 will be far less frugal with energy than the 2CV, with one electric engine in the front and two in the rear, producing an expected one thousand horsepower. I could not find details for what engine or batteries Citroën have planned, other than they want to keep the 2CV’s weight to under one metric tonne – a base Mini Cooper from BMW is 400kg more than that these days – so it won’t match the Jaguar’s expected range of four hundred miles on a single charge.

The Jaguar Type 00 concept was a two-door coupé, with my expectation being that a modern E-Type would appear. Instead, with two extra doors and a “grand tourer” description, the Type 01 is not a new XJ6 saloon either. Armour-plated XJs had often been used as British ministerial cars, but since Jaguar ended XJ production in 2019, its replacement in this capacity has either been the Range Rover, or even the Audi A8 – the Type 01 is too ostentatious for a politician to be seen using it in an official capacity. 

My having mentioned Aston Martin earlier is because the car the Type 01 reminds me of the most is the 1976-90 Lagonda, a cutting-edge design plied with computers and touch controls and, having been built by hand, made exclusive through its increased expense – they are even about the same size.

The Citroën 2CV, however, will only remind me of the original 2CV – every styling choice, from the tiny door handles, corrugated bonnet and headlights sticking out from above the front wheel arches, is a nostalgic exercise, and not just an inspiration like the original C3 from 2002. Coming from a mass-market car company with multiple names, the 2CV concept looks so much like the original 2CV that I cannot imagine the final version looking so close, as the platform on which it is built cannot be then shared for other cars – a very rounded-looking Peugeot or Vauxhall city car will just look suspicious.

That said, one other small car had a similar rounded design and protruding headlights, selling in huge numbers: the 2002-10 Nissan Micra. Nissan had already made retro cars like the Figaro convertible and a 1989-91 van inspired by the Fourgonnette, named the “S-Cargo” – the 2CV had already been nicknamed the “tin snail”.

But the new 2026 Nissan Micra is why my original point stands. Based on the Renault 5 E-Tech, with Renault having also dipped into its back catalogue for its small car range, along with the Renault 4 and Twingo, the new Micra has only a restyled front and rear, and even that doesn’t stop it from looking like a Renault 5. Renault has since insisted other cars using its platform need to look more distinctive, as a new Ford Fiesta will be based on it too.

What I was surprised most about was the new 2CV’s spartan yellow interior with front and rear bench seats, a tiny heads-up dashboard display and a central console made from a wicker basket. The nicest touch of all is the on-screen control system that uses illustrations from Belgian comic book artist Jean-Luc Delvaux, a hand-drawn touch I have not seen on any other car, while I hope the removable “Radioën” sound system makes it to the final car, because that means I could by one for myself.

I anticipate seeing a new Citroën 2CV on British roads before a Jaguar Type 01, despite the former still being two years away. Both JLR and Stellantis hope these cars will revitalise their brands, but that is a question that will be answered by what cars follow them. Neither the 2CV nor the Type 01 can afford to be a one-off.

AN UMBRELLA ON FOUR WHEELS [25]

Citroën are justifiably proud of the 2CV, made from 1948 to 1990, as its company website shows. The car got France back on the road after the Second World War, becoming as iconic as the original Volkswagen Beetle, and its outward simplicity belies the sheer lengths made to engineer a car that, for all intents and purposes, had to be like no other.

However, “The Tin Snail” is also known for being very slow, having a 0-60 mph time of “eventually,” and having been introduced at a time when “crumple zones” were usually found inside the driver, which the 2CV solved by designing the front of the chassis to fold up in a crash. Examining the 2CV was makes clear why it cannot be judged against most cars, its own agenda being very different.

Despite its introduction in the same year as the Morris Minor, Citroën were producing prototypes and pre-production models as early as 1938 – most were destroyed before the Nazi invasion of France, but three were unearthed in a barn in 1995.

The intended customers were to be found across rural France, and an often-quoted set of rules the new car had to meet were formed, supported by surveys of up to ten thousand people: the 2CV had to power four people, carrying 50 kg of farm goods, at 30 mph, across muddy, unpaved roads. The most famous rule was it had to be able to carry eggs across a ploughed field, without breaking a single egg – just holding an egg in your hand is fraught with danger for some.

Right to the end of its production, the 2CV was the cheapest car on general sale, and this was the intention. Early prototypes had only one headlight and one brake light, giving the impression at night of only being a motorcycle, while a lack of door handles required the driver to lift a window to break into their own car – the first proper models on sale did have door handles, but then you couldn’t lock the doors.

Anything that could be removed to save weight would be done, to keep fuel consumption down, before war caused the price of the aluminium bodywork to skyrocket. However, the steel bodies produced could be repaired and replaced with a few bolts by practically anyone, and it soon became available in colours other than slate grey.

The 2CV engine was never built for speed – it could catch up with a moped, while later versions could reach 71 mph but, again, that was not the point. The specially-designed two-stroke engine did without an oil thermostat, radiator and drive belt, and placed an oil cooler just behind the engine fan, which had been bolted onto the crankshaft. This means that the engine ran most efficiently when you buried the accelerator pedal into the floor, and kept it there. It also meant the windscreen wipers worked at their best, as their being powered by the speedometer meant, as you drove more quickly, the faster they moved.

If you wanted to keep the engine from running too cold, in cold weather, Citroën provided a “muff” (their name) to block the grille. Furthermore, if you bought your 2CV in 1990, and couldn’t get your key ignition to start your car, you were still being provided with a starting handle.

For the unpaved French roads, independent suspension for all four wheels, the first radial tyres, front wheel drive, and a four-speed gearbox were innovations usually seen on more expensive cars – a four-wheel drive version, the Sahara, was also produced for a while, which put a second engine in the boot.

Safety and emissions standards eventually ended 2CV production, and the standards and regulations that now exist mean a similar car will not be made – here’s hoping that, when the next challenge is found, someone from Citroën gets there first.