Toronto to Carlisle with The Great Road Trip
By George Dyke….
This year’s Carlisle trip for me started a few days earlier in Toronto with the arrival of “The Great Road Trip”. On Tuesday I hosted the group as we toured downtown Toronto and did a media interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In the evening some Citroën Autoclub Canada members got together in Port Credit to greet them.
While they went on to Niagara Falls and Buffalo on Wednesday, I prepped my 2CV for the road trip to Carlisle, meeting The Great Road Trip folks on Thursday morning at Jim Hohensee’s time-warp garage in downtown Buffalo. What a place that is! Jim was working on two Porsche 911s, a 956 and a Triumph TR3 in the front of the shop. Venturing further into the building and the cavernous space behind, we were in awe as it was packed with parts and additional cars including Jim’s DS21 Safari, a DS21 sedan and a 1967 2CV — all barely visible to us gob-smacked onlookers.
From Buffalo we set out for the 6-hour drive to Carlisle taking us through the mountainous region of lower New York State and Pennsylvania where spring was just coming to life.
It was a warm sunny day, perfect for seeing the leaves that were just budding in the Buffalo area transition to fully developed foliage as we proceeded south on i15 that parallels the Susquehanna River.
We made it without incident to Carlisle and ready for The Grand Tour 2CV and a row of Citroëns, including my 2CV, make an escorted entrance into the show field on Friday morning.
The show field included a special display of the works of Robert Opron that included a front end face-lifted 1968 DS21 owned by Paul Anderson, a freshly restored GS owned by Brent Bartley, a CX and Paul Anderson’s immaculate 1974 SM IE.
As is par for the course, there was an eclectic mix of Citroëns on display, with a few even more unusual ones, such as a 2CV owned by Paul Hanson with a Sparrow Engineering BMW motorcycle engine transplant.
And a Romanian OlCit owned by Darie Manea in Virginia — a take-off on the Visa but with a dashboard “control cannister” layout that is horizontal rather than the funky vertical configuration found on the Visa.
Kudos go the Johnathan Dennis who drove his DS21 “driver” that he acquired from David Cossit-Levy, and has diligently worked on the car, instilling enough confidence that he drove it to Carlisle all the way from Kentucky!
And while James Heaney trailered his “barn find” US spec Ami Break to the show from Indianapolis, it impressed onlookers with the fact that it has survived more or less intact! Peeling paint certainly gave it a “patina” that James is debating about preserving and we noted that it had larger disc wheel covers that were not the typical 2CV type found on the Ami. They were flatter and being slightly larger, appeared to grip the inner ridge of the rim better that the 2CV type hubcap. We wondered if indeed they were original hubcaps offered on US spec cars at the time?
Then there was this DS flower car — custom built by the owner in three weeks when his mother was rapidly ailing, and used in her funeral procession.
Aside from the exemplary examples of Citroëns on display there was, of course, the long awaited social opportunity for us to get together after a few years of Covid deprivation.
You can read Brad Naus’s the full report of the Citroëns at Carlisle event here: https://citroenvie.com/citroens-at-carlisle-2022/.