One you don’t see every day in China: a very rare Series 1 Citroen CX! We know that a small number of Series 1 was used as high-end taxi’s in Beijing in the early 1980’s. Considering this car’s yellow color, I assume this is one of those.
The Citroen CX Series 1 was made from 1974 until 1985, fitted with stainless steel bumpers and Citroen’s famous spaceship-style dashboard. The car that I saw was obviously not well-taken care of, but it was certainly savable. I found it on a parking lot with many more classic cars, but there was no one insight. I asked the owner of a nearby shop, but he didn’t know anything.
The antenna folded down on the roof. The mechanism was in perfect order.
The CX has pneumatic suspension, making for a very comfortable ride. The CX was available with various petrol and diesel engines. Sadly, my mellow yellow did not have an engine badge. But considering China’s fear of diesel engines in passenger cars, we can be pretty sure it is a petrol. And since taxi’s usually use a base engine, we can be reasonable sure it has either a 2.0 or 2.2 under the long bonnet.
This is the dashboard! It was designed to look like something of a spaceship, and it worked. There were no stalks, only control buttons on each side of the main pod. The steering wheel had just one spoke. The radio sat in the middle, it its own pot with a storage compartment above it.
Just brilliant.
Manual gearbox, and aircraft-like handles for the fan and heater.
Luxurious cloth seats looked remarkable well.
Original Citroen and TOTAL stickers!!!
For this photo, I actually had to leave the parking lot, walk all the way to the back, go to some bushes, and lean on one elbow on a fence. Yes, spotting great cars in China can be hard!
Best one I could make from the rear. Note the shape of the rear window. Citroen is still using this shape today on their C5 and C6 (China) models.
I really hope somebody secures this car, and stores it somewhere safely. This Citroen CX is so rare in China, it really should be in a museum.
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