The best of times, the worst of times:

By Geoff FitzGibbon…..

I was at my desk in the Citroën UK dealer showroom where I worked when a customer I knew came in. He and his wife had purchased a D Super 5 from me a few months before. Unlike his previous visits, this time he was wearing a plaster cast and sling on one of his arms. Naturally, I asked what had happened. He had been involved in a bizarre, high-speed accident with a motorcycle.

It seems he had been travelling alone along a divided highway at a little over the 60MPH speed limit. The highway was not a motorway with ramp access only, but had junctions where traffic from the sides could join the highway or cross it. A motorcyclist had been crossing over both lanes, missed seeing the D Super, and crossed right in front of it. My customer had just enough time to hit the brakes hard before he hit the rider.

The nose of the D dropped down under the sudden weight transfer, scooped up the motorcyclist and deposited him into the car’s back seat via the windshield. The customer’s injuries were passing blows from the bike’s rider. The customer brought the D safely to a halt. The injuries to both parties were relatively minor; the motorcyclist suffered a concussion, a broken collar bone and damaged some ribs. Overall, both of them got off amazingly lightly.

The emergency services personnel were amazed: they would have expected the motorcyclist to have been killed and the car’s occupant could easily have been killed also; the police attending said they knew of no other vehicle that could have done what the D Super had done – by sliding under the rider and cushioning the impact for both parties so well.

Not bad for a design that was nearly 20 years old. 

I believe the D was subsequently repaired and used for several more years. Needless to say, my customer would drive no other brand from then on.