A HUGE car brand is set to bring back an iconic retro car as an EV – 46 years after it featured in a James Bond movie.
The iconic car is set to take on a new look as an electric car and will be ready within the next two years.
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Citroen’s global chief executive Thierry Koskas has confirmed that a small number of retro Citroen models will be getting an upgrade.
Speaking at the launch of Citroen’s latest model, the e-C3 electric hatchback, Thierry told This is Money: “We want some of our iconic models to further lift the Citroen brand.
“We have a fantastic heritage – including models like the DS and the 2CV.”
When asked if the Citroen 2CV was returning, he said teasingly: “’We don’t exclude that we will use this heritage.”
The Citroen DS model from the mid 1950s to ‘70s is another retro car which could return.
The 2CV featured in the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only in a scene where Bond jumps into the passenger seat of co-star Melina Havelock’s yellow car, heading off the twisty mountain roads, while Hector Gonzalez’s men give chase in a pair of Peugeot 504 sedans.
Bond eventually takes the wheel and the car enjoys a bone-rattling climax that sees it hurtling through olive trees, criss-crossing the road, before jumping over a pursuing Peugeot and bumping its offside-rear wheel on the sedan’s roof.
The scene was filmed in Corfu over 12 days and the car was one of several 2CVs used in the filming. While four are known to have survived filming, at least two were scrapped when production ended.
Thierry, who started his own career selling cars at a dealership in East London in the 1990s, said that although retro models were being brought back, it would not be ‘systematic’ across the Citroen range.
When it comes to pricing the 2CV, if it is indeed brought back, it is likely bosses would seek to give it an affordable and ‘popular’ price, and price it under £20,000.
According to reports earlier this year, the Citroen manufacturer may relaunch the 2CV name, hinting that work has already started on a modern-day version of the iconic French car.
Former Citroen boss – and now Peugeot CEO Linda Jackson told the motoring magazine six years ago: “We evolve our designs by looking at the past but what I don’t want to do is become a manufacturer that produces retro.
“I’m not going to produce a new 2CV. That had its time, it was right, but it’s about finding out the next design that’ll be right for the customer.”
But since then, a senior source told Autocar in January that designs had begun on another version of the ‘Deux Chevaux’.
The original 2CV was designed before WW2 and was made to enable a farmer and family to cross a freshly ploughed field with a basket full of eggs without breaking them.
When war broke out, prototypes were hidden away during the conflict before 9million were sold between 1948 and 1990.
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