Citroën 7cv ‘Traction Avant’

This ‘Traction Avant’ pays homage to one of the bravest women of the Second World War.

After a somewhat eventful journey to England – tyres blew and the engine failed – the car was restored by Mr Alliss in the early 1980s, by which time the engine capacity had been increased to 1911cc. In later life the car was rallied in the UK, France and Denmark.

Debbie acquired the car in late 2017 and christened it ‘Violette’ after the wartime French resistance heroine Violette Szabo. She describes her Citroën as ‘simply wonderful’.

Famous as the first truly mass production car to feature front wheel drive, four wheel independent suspension and a unitary (one-piece) body construction, the Citroën ‘Traction Avant’ (front wheel drive) was first produced in 1934 and continued to be manufactured – in France with a break between 1939 and 1945, and post-war in the UK at Slough – until 1957. Some 760,000 were produced before being replaced by the space-age DS model.

About this vehicle

The car often to be seen at Shuttleworth is owned by Collection volunteer Debbie Land. Built in Paris in 1936 it spent the years of the Second World War hidden under straw in a barn in the Pyrenees by its first owner Maurice Frey - to prevent it being requisitioned by the occupying German army - before being sold to Londoner Phillipe Alliss in 1970.