Conceived by Citroën Vice-President Pierre Boulanger to help motorise the large number of farmers still using horses and carts in 1930s France,[4] the 2CV has a combination of innovative engineering and straightforward, utilitarian bodywork.

[5][6][7] The 2CV featured overall low cost of ownership, simplicity of maintenance, an easily serviced air-cooled engine (originally offering 6.6 kW, 9 hp), and minimal fuel consumption.

In addition, it had been designed to cross a freshly ploughed field with a basket full of eggs on the passenger's seat without breaking them, because of the great lack of paved roads in France at the time; with a long-travel suspension system,[8] that connects front and rear wheels, giving a very soft ride.

[21] France at that time had a large rural population which could not yet afford cars; Citroën used the survey results to prepare a design brief for a low-priced, rugged "umbrella on four wheels" that would enable four people to transport 50 kg (110 lb) of farm goods to market at 50 km/h (30 mph),[22] if necessary across muddy, unpaved roads.

The TPV (Toute Petite Voiture – "Very Small Car") was to be developed in secrecy at Michelin facilities at Clermont-Ferrand and at Citroën in Paris, by the design team who had created the Traction Avant.

[27] The first prototypes were bare chassis with rudimentary controls, seating and roof; test drivers wore leather flying suits, of the type used in contemporary open biplanes.

The overload bar came into play when the car had three people on board, two in the front and one in the rear, to support the extra load of a fourth passenger and fifty kilograms of luggage.

[35] The Nazis had attempted to loot Citroën's press tools; this was frustrated after Boulanger got the French Resistance to relabel the rail cars containing them in the Paris marshalling yard.

[63] By 1980, the boost to 2CV sales across Europe delivered by the 1973 Energy Crisis had begun to wear off and there was a whole new generation of superminis and economy cars available from European and Japanese manufacturers.

[64] Citroën launched a special edition 2CV "007" to coincide with the film, it was fitted with the standard engine and painted yellow with "007" on the front doors and fake bullet hole stickers.

In 1959, the British Royal Navy ordered 65 2CV pick-ups from the Slough plant, following sea tests aboard HMS Bulwark in the West Indies and the Indian Ocean during 1957–58, with the Westland Whirlwind helicopters of 845 squadron RNAS.

They were to serve as motor transport with the 42nd Commando regiment of the Royal Marines, which required robust and reliable vehicles to cope with jungle tracks, that were light enough to be taken ashore by helicopter from the aircraft carriers.

The original model that produced 6.6 kW (9 hp) and had a top speed of 64 km/h (40 mph) was unsuited to the expanding post-war US freeway network, and was never widely accepted in North America.

[86] This idea of building a "simplified" 2CV in developing countries was subsequently tried several times, as detailed under Citroën Facile à Fabriquer (easy to manufacture).

[citation needed] The Citroën factory offered several high volume variant models on the 2CV running gear – the Ami; the Dyane; the Acadiane; and the Méhari.

The 1948 car featured radial tyres, which had just been commercialised;[46] front-wheel drive; rack and pinion steering mounted inside the front suspension cross-tube, away from a frontal impact; rear fender skirts (the suspension design allowed wheel changes without removing the skirts); bolt-on detachable front and rear wings; detachable doors, bonnet (and boot lid after 1960), by "slide out" P-profile sheet metal hinges; flap-up windows, as roll up windows were considered too heavy and expensive.

[104][105] Because the original design brief called for a low speed car, little or no attention was paid to aerodynamics; the body had a drag coefficient of Cd=0.51, high by today's standards but typical for the era.

This reduces weight and lowers the centre of gravity, and allows the carrying of long or irregularly shaped items, but the key reason was that fabric was cheaper than steel which was in short supply and expensive after the war.

A larger than conventional steering castor angle, ensures that the front wheels are closer to vertical than the rears, when cornering hard with a lot of body roll.

[118] On early cars friction dampers (like a dry version of a multi-plate clutch design) were fitted at the mountings of the front and rear swinging arms to the cross-tubes.

[5][120] Citroën had developed expertise with front-wheel drive due to the pioneering Traction Avant, which was the first mass-produced steel monocoque front-wheel-drive car in the world.

This, combined with the inevitable small amount of "leakage" of combustion gases past the pistons leads to a positive pressure in the crankcase which must be removed in the interests of engine efficiency and to prevent oil and gas leaks.

Because gases are expelled but not admitted this creates a slight vacuum in the crankcase so that any weak joint or failed seal causes air to be sucked in rather than allowing oil to leak out.

Many of the improvements in power output made to the 2CV engine over its production life were merely the result of removing the original in-built restrictions with more efficient carburettors, manifolds and valve events.

Although the front of the chassis was designed to fold up, to form a crumple zone according to a 1984 Citroën brochure, in common with other small cars of its era its crashworthiness was very poor by modern standards.

[citation needed] Although not a replacement for the 2CV, the AX supermini, a conventional urban runabout, unremarkable apart from its exceptional lightness, seemed to address the car makers' requirements at the entry level in the early 1990s.

Incorporating some components from the DS (most noticeably the single-spoke steering wheel, and windscreen for the rear window), it did not achieve market success, because it was heavier than the 2CV and still used the 425 cc engine and so was even slower, reaching 100 km/h (62 mph) only under favourable conditions.

There was widespread production of similar 2CV-based vehicles in a large number of countries, including Iran[141] (Baby-Brousse, Jyane-Mehari), Vietnam (Dalat),[142] Chile (Yagan),[76] Belgium (VanClee), Spain, Portugal and others.

[143] The 2CV-based delivery vans introduced in the spring of 1951 differed from the sedan from the B-pillar onwards by having a box-like, spacious cargo area that could be loaded through two gullwing doors at the rear.

[144] In France and Switzerland,[145] these vehicles were often to be found at the post office and small businesses, while in Germany the possibility of acquiring a mobile home at a reasonable price was the decisive factor for buyers.