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Weird car of the week 2nd October 2005 |
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Saturday, 01 October 2005 |
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Citroen GS Bi-Rotor
This week we look at the Citroen GS, while many people think the early Citroen's had weird styling and quirky design, one of the weirdest thing about this car was the fact Citroen produced 800 odd rotary powered cars then bought as many as they could back.
Under the bonnet the GS was very different from many other cars available at the time, the majority of the GS used an all alloy flat four engine that was air cooled. Also available from 1973 to 1977 was a luxury version with a rotary engine derived from the NSU RO-80, only 847 GS Birotors were made. Citroen ended up buying back as many GS Birotors as they could through a recall and ended up crushing them. This makes the Birotor an extremely rare car as many were not returned and still survive today. Citroen's decision was probably not totally based on the reliability problems associated with the Birotor, but more about economics. In 1977 NSU, the source of the GS Birotors motor, ceased to exist as it was merged with Audi/VW. This left Citroen without a cheap parts source for the 847 cars it had made, the choice between getting rid of 800 odd cars or setting up their own spares manufacturing operation was probably a simple one.
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