1966 DS19 Cabriolet – at Meadowbrook Concours d’Elegance

1966 DS19 Cabriolet – at Meadowbrook Concours d’Elegance. Photographed by Richard Spiegelman

10 comments

  1. Spectacular, what better word to describe this beauty. We could talk for ever of the beauty in the design………..lovely !

  2. Completely agree.
    I marvel endlessly at the sheer genius of the body design made ever more exquisite in this convertible form.

  3. My mind is always running, usually searching for ways to improve the esthetics of things. When I see a DS it stops & enjoys the moment. This car is like a timeless piece of music – always therapeutic, engaging and mesmerizing. So, I’m still sitting here studying it while the rest of the family has left the room… Guess I’ll close the computer now and come back to it later.

    1. Yes,, they were very prone to ruinous rust, as Chapron probably never anticipated his design becoming SO desirable to cause them to be kept alive to this very day. However, he missed the fatal flaw in their structural design as did Citroen also as no one foresaw their 70 yr + life potential. An old Double Chevron magazine’s photos pictures the upper structure – called the “greenhouse” in car factory language – incorporating the roof trough, all doorpillars and trunk sidewalls – being lowered onto the platform assembly comprising floorpan, box channel chassis beams, firewall, seat boxes, gastank compartment and trunk floor as a second unified assembly. The bare steel assemblies show the open end of the front two feet of partial box channel and how it is constructed from the bottom of the front door hinge pillar to the firewall. If you can find the photos, you may notice that the outer vertical chassis box wall ends at the doorpillar bottom. That ending leaves the entire rearward end of the cabrio, including the box section chassis beam, unable to resist bending well when the roof trough is cut off for the cabrios and the floorpan weakens from rust. Even though the factory used Safari chassis with a double thick outer vertical wall for their cabrios, once the roof trough is eliminated, the cabrio chassis is subject to complete failure due to rust in the floorpan, causing potential folding of the cabrios like a book.
      Every cabrio ever built by either Chapron or the factory is subject to this potentially massive failure. The solution for any original cabrio undergoing restoration is to remove the approx. 30 degree tilted front 2 feet of the original outer chassis box wall, and extending the original outer vertical wall all the way from below the hinge pillar to the firewall and mig welding the extension to it to create a continuous closed box to the front wall and chassis horns. That fix to my ’67 Chapron is still working perfectly, meaning the top fit is as new to the windshield, for 37 yrs now. And this fix can make any sedan/safari much stronger in a head-on collision. If your Citroen dash seems to move, tilt or flex on rough roads relative to the front seats, this is the right fix.

  4. The Makers show that they are capable of building an amazing car over and over. how can we get them in production?

      1. I suggest anyone ordering a rebuilt/newly created DS cabrio find out how they build the front two feet of the chassis beans from below the front door hinge pillar to the firewall. If they do not extend the outer vertical wall from its original ending at the pillar and continue it to a strong right angle weld flange attaching it to the firewall, I’d suggest insisting they do that or walk away, as a front end collision could potentially fold the car’s front end into the front seats. I also noticed in videos of the German shop which builds cabrios, that the rear seat near vertical wall, is made of wood, whereas all Chapron cabrios have a wraparound steel panel bracing the seatback and welded to the side pockets for the cabrio top when folded. Maybe they wrapped steel around the wood frame later, but it’s worth asking how that area is constructed.

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