WHAT DO YOU SEE?
Is it a guy armed with a barrette and a freshly-baked Baguette cycling down a tree-lined path?
Could it be an idealist Sorbonne student sitting at chick Parisian Café arguing about Marx & Sartre?
Maybe a decadent fashion designer looking at his “Heroine Chic” models as they parade down the catwalk?
Or perhaps it’s President Chirac pulling a middle one at George W?
Everyone has his/her own picture in mind.
Mine hold an old “Bleu de France” Citroen Deux Chevaux (a.k.a. 2CV) parked against an old country stonewall.
I took this picture outside an old stone house in the small, achingly beautiful, Provence town of Gordes.
If the name sounds vaguely familiar to some of you, it’s because the town and its surroundings were the inspiration of the bestseller “A year in Provence”. Many scenes of the 2006 movie adaptation, starring Russell Crowe, were shot on location.
Indeed, in real-life, the village – nestled like an eagle’s nest on a top of a rocky cliff – is as beautiful as that kitschy movie.
But we’re not here to talk about Gordes.
We’re here to talk about an icon that is as synonymous to Frenchness as a pack of Gauloises.
The BIG story of a little car
Launched from the ashes of World War 2, the first Deux Chevaux rolled out in 1949. Hardly changed since, it still rolls on the streets, paths and alleyways of rural France. Paris may have the sophisticated Chic – embodied by another timeless Citroen – The futuristic DS.
The rest of the country, however, lives and plays to the sound of a different tune. Utilitarian, practical and Gaulistic, rural France didn’t need an Avant guard and unreliable form of transportation. It needed the opposite. The 2CV was just the thing. An ingenious design of utter simplicity, the little Citroen is still heralded as the “most intelligent application of minimalism ever to succeed as a car”. Close to four million 2CVs rolled out of Citroen’s factory in a staggering 40 years of production.
Which brings me back to the steep cobblestone alley where I found the specific specimen. I was admiring the car as a young guy wearing blue overalls approached me and started talking in fluent French. I didn’t get most of it but I did understand he wanted me to come in. So I did. There, in a little courtyard, I found a dozen parked 2CVs from various manufacturing periods and in various restoration levels. The French guy’s hobby was restoring them to their former glory. And he took his time showing me around. We had a long chat – a mix of my broken French and his hand signals and departed with a warm handshake.
I guess you can add gracious hospitality to my own picture of France.