The Restoration of Brian’s 1972 Citroën DS21 Pallas Jubilée: Part 4

By Will Hodgkiss….

Welcome back to Update #4 on the restoration of Brian’s 1972 Citroën DS21 Pallas Jubilee.

Well, I regret that I didn’t meet my anticipated goal of having Brian’s DS safe, reliable, and beautiful by August 15. We’ve managed to make her almost safe and almost beautiful. Reliability remains to be seen.

It sounds almost human! I’m beginning to think this is going to be like one of those cars I’ve owned over the years that actually had a personality. My Sunbeam Minx did, and my ’71 E-Type Jag was like a friend who always annoyed me, but whom I liked anyway. I wanted to marry my ’66 VW Beetle.

But not all my news is bad. We passed a full safety inspection around the middle of September, so I was able to take the DS to Bernard’s garage near Tweed. This gives him better access to the car and helped lower my costs by eliminating the one-and-a-half-hour round trip to Napanee.

Progress has been achieved by taking two steps forward and one step back. Carburetor issues, electrical issues, and just when everything seemed nearly ready, we would spring a leak.

A rear rim decided to leak last week. Removing the wheel to fix the valve revealed that a suspension stop was missing and other parts were bent.

There have been other issues, but I’ll stop here for fear of depressing the reader.

Considering how complex this car is, I think it’s amazing that it worked at all even when new. But it did, and it will again. I expect good news very soon.