It's like a bad dream. I keep seeing a Citroën in the rearview mirror, but it's your brother following us. Very overprotective brother.
He's my big brother, you know.
Yeah, he's just following us, that's all.
Yeah, yeah. Boy, this is a perfect day for this car, about 73, 74 degrees. Just enough for a cool breeze and a warm sun. If you were a salesman, you'd sell 100 of these today. Welcome to this episode of Jay Leno's Garage. The car we're featuring today, 1966 Citroën Chapron 21, custom-bodied. I love these. They're fabulous cars. A Citroën, just because of its smooth ride and quiet, just makes for a great convertible.
This is a 19. We'll find out. Well, there's a story behind this. This car led to this car. Let's bring on the two owners, the brothers Long, the Long brothers, John and Greg. Gentlemen, come on in, guys. A couple of Citroëns. All Citroëns are quirky, and these guys are no different. They don't look quirky, but I'm sure we'll find out what the quirks are. But it takes a certain type to appreciate these, and I love them. I think they're great.
Americans never really... even those that love Citroën, the dealers were sort of nonexistent. If you owned a Shell gas station, you wanted to be a Citroën dealer. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Then they'll send you a couple of brochures, you sell them, and then there's no warranty, there's no parts available. You know, it's just wonderfully French in the best way. It just makes me laugh. You have this car because of this car. Is that correct?
Okay, so tell us the story. This is what, a '61?
That was sort of the lowest one.
And then it went up to the DS, and that's the DS.
Remember, like the Galaxy versus the Galaxy 500, the Galaxy LTD.
Okay, so that was your base Citroën.
Same motor as this, correct? Or is it smaller?
That's a 21, 2.1 L. This is 19. 19. The same basic engine.
And this one's been in your family for quite a while.
Let John tell, 'cause he found it.
So, how did you acquire this car?
Well, 'acquire' is probably the perfect word. I was about 17 years old and fell in love with Citroën. And there was one about six blocks away from my house, and it was sitting in the front yard of this house, you know, on the grass, grass growing all around it. Looked like it had been there for quite a while.
So I went up to the front door, knocked on the door. Guy came there. I said, 'Would you like to sell the Citroën?' He said he wanted 100 bucks. Of course, at 17, I didn't have 100 bucks. That was a lot of money.
So I said, 'Oh, well, I really like Citroëns, but I don't have 100 bucks.' He said, 'Well, too bad.' Another month later, I came up with this idea. So I go and knock on his house. I said, 'I still see the Citroën's still here. How would you like to donate it to the school Citroën car club?' Which just happened to be me and two of my friends.
So I said, 'If you take it away today, you can have it free.'
'My wife's been giving me a hassle about this car sitting on the lawn looking really ugly in front of our house. You can have it, but the trick is you have to take it today.'
Of course not. It's a Citroën.
And so, hooked it up, hauled it back to the house, and attempted to get a Citroën running.
And you guys grew up in Canada, right?
So French cars are much more prevalent in Canada. Because here, especially if you grew up in California, it was '57 Chevys and American Graffiti and hot rods. So for me, young guys, especially 17-year-olds that like Citroëns, that seems a bit odd.
But that would explain Canadians, you see. You know, I've worked in Canada, every city — Moose Jaw. So you're in Victoria, is that right?
Okay, is that where the island is, where they have tea?
Yeah, yeah, okay, Vancouver Island. Yeah, that's a beautiful area.
Okay. So it must have been... it doesn't look like there's any rust.
But since I've owned it for — I don't know — quite a few years, from 17 to my 70s.
You know, I had a lot of time to work on it. Gregory built the engine once. I rebuilt the engine again. It was a little bit of rust on this frame.
Time to pay off that $100. 70 years. Yeah, so apparently you painted it...
with different manufacturers of paint, 'cause every panel is a different orange.
Yeah, well, I tried to match this color.
Which was called in French, capucine.
Which means nasturtium, the flower.
And not the singer. There was a French singer called Capucine. And I really loved this color, and the paint had sort of all gone, so I wanted to paint it the original Citroën color.
And that was the original Citroën color?
This bright orange was the original Citroën color, but there was no formula for it, because it wasn't in the '60s.
He says he painted it — had it painted — all the same paint, all the same batch, except this is an aluminum hood. Oh.
And this is what happened.
So that's the only clue I have, 'cause all the steel parts are that modern, you know, dull look.
Right, yeah. Matte finish.
But this is really trendy, because it's not just all dull. It's dull and shiny.
So, that's the new trend. 2026, you know. All right. And now, has this got a Citromatic or is it a standard shift?
Standard. All the IDs were standard.
Yeah. I never drove a Citromatic. Were they good automatics or not?
Yeah, yeah. It's perfect for the Citroën DS.
But I don't... I just like this quirk here. I just like the manual.
Yeah. But very nice. Now, the ID — did it have all the same options? I mean, I have a couple of Citroëns, you know, that had the leveling suspension. You got that, right? Okay. But that's about it. Nothing else.
That's all this has, is the suspension.
Manual steering, manual brakes.
Manual everything else. They just tried to reduce the cost.
They came up with the DS, which was way more expensive than the Traction.
And so then quickly they realized, oops. So they kind of took a lot of the features out and came with this.
The suspension, which is the best part.
All right. Well, let's go to this one for a minute now. Now, Chapron was a very — not exotic — French body builder, but certainly built beautiful customs, mostly on French chassis when he could. Why the factory did not develop their own convertible, I don't know, but...
Well, they kind of did. They hired him to build this.
I see. He built it for them.
Yeah, so it was sold through the network, the dealerships. Not very many were built, because they cost twice as much as this one, uh, because that whole back was hand-beaten.
In their own little workshop in Paris.
Yeah, I mean, it's a beautiful car, and they just go down the road so floaty. They're just wonderful driving cars. This is great. How rough was this one when you got it?
It had been a one-owner car — a professor at the University of San Jose in California. So it was pretty beat up.
Okay. So you got it in the States, not in Canada.
It was in California, and so it had zero rust, which is of course a rarity. And then my friend — actually, Joe and I — was good friend Gary Cullen,
Oh, Gary. I don't know...
who helped you find the Tatra.
Tatras, Citroëns, they kind of go together.
Yeah, the same quirky idea.
So he found it, he restored it, and it bothered him when he drove it, because for some reason the wind on his neck caused his neck to kink up.
Well, you could put the roof up, I guess.
You could, but then he's like, 'Well, then I have this giant blind spot.'
Anyway, I was moving to California, and I was like, 'This is my dream car.' So I've had it 30 years.
Well, it's become quite valuable now, aren't these? Aren't these in the couple-of-hundred-grand category now?
Well, it just looks beautiful. And you seem to have done a magn— you did the whole car, didn't you?
Well, about 15 years ago did all the mechanics, and about 5 years ago did the paint and interior. But it's got hundreds of thousands of miles on it.
Yeah, it's just fabulous. It's a 2.1 L four-cylinder carburetor, not fuel injection yet. Yeah, carburetor. Which I like — it's just easier, isn't it? Yeah, nicely done. Four-speed.
Yeah, I upgraded to five-speed, 'cause I just did Route 66 with my high school buddy, so...
We did Route 66 in a '66.
Oh, okay. Well, that's pretty...
Yeah. And how old were you? How old were you at the time?
There you go. What are the odds? Quirky. What did I tell you? You see the quirks coming out. Very good. And it has the pneumatic suspension. Robert Opron, he was the designer with that. Who was...
No, Bertone. Back in '56.
Bertone did it. That's right. Yeah, you know, I have a theory: it's just that all the other cars are designed in kind of dirty cities — Detroit, Modena, Stuttgart. This is in Paris, in downtown Paris, city of lights, you know. So there's a sort of intellectualism and romanticism about these cars that I just find fascinating.
I just like how quirky... You know, anywhere else in Europe it's 6 mm, 8 mm, 10 mm. You go to France, it's 5 mm, 7 mm, 9 mm. I mean, every other one you pull the switch out to turn the headlight on. In French cars you push the switch in to turn the headlight on, you pull it out to turn it off. So I would drive my French cars, go in the house, and realize I left all the lights on. I have to go back out again. It's just so different, just so odd. But I just like it. It makes it unique.
It's so funny that in the middle of Europe everybody else is the same except for the French. I don't know why that is. I wouldn't understand if they were way off somewhere off the coast of Africa or something. Oh, okay, maybe. But I think it's what makes them unique. I mean, to this day, when you watch a science fiction movie, they will all have a Citroën DS going in the background as a car of the future. Whether it was the movie 1984 or any of those — even today, when they did the Da Vinci Code, they had one go by. Is it a power top or a manual top?
Yeah. They weren't quite that American, yeah.
Right. Yeah, really no power anything.
The car was the same price as a Cadillac Eldorado convertible in '66. So you got the small engine, no power anything.
You had to be a Canadian to buy it.
Yeah. They did sell a few in Quebec.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Quebec, of course. There you go. Yeah, yeah.
They sold a lot of Citroëns in Quebec.
But it's worth it, isn't it? Because it just — it drives like a Cadillac. I mean, people are amazed. You know, I remember in the day we used to be a Citroën dealer when I worked at Foreign Motors in Boston. And there was like a bumpy road behind the dealership, and we would take people out in the Citroën, and they couldn't believe it, you know? You drive in their car and it's bang, bang, bang. And the Citroën just sort of gliding over, you know? So they're wonderful driving cars.
The trouble was, when they developed this car, they were going to put a flat six-cylinder engine in it.
