DS (D-Series)

A Programme That Predated the Peace The DS came out of Citroen's Voiture a Grande Diffusion project, begun under Pierre-Jules Boulanger in the late 1930s and carried on quietly through the occupation alongside the work that became the 2CV. Andre Lefebvre, chief engineer on the Traction Avant, set the architecture: front-wheel drive, integral body-frame construction, and front and rear tracks of deliberately different width to shrink the turning circle. Flaminio Bertoni did the body, and did it late - the exterior was not signed off until weeks before the show, because Pierre Bercot wanted the shape to look as unusual as the engineering underneath. The third name is Paul Mages, whose 1942 proposal for a self-adjusting suspension run from a central high-pressure circuit was taken up by Boulanger over the objections of more senior men, and was running on a Traction by 1949.

October 1955 The DS 19 was shown at the Paris Salon in October 1955, and the sources do not agree on the day: Wikipedia says the 6th, while Ate Up With Motor, Motoring Research and Conceptcarz say the 5th. Nor do they agree on the arithmetic of the reception. Wikipedia and Conceptcarz record 743 orders in the first fifteen minutes and 12,000 by the end of the first day, with Wikipedia putting 80,000 deposits across the show's ten days; Motoring Research gives over 700 in the opening minutes and 79,000 by the close. What arrived was a car with powered brakes and steering, a hydraulic semi-automatic gearbox, inboard front discs and suspension that levelled itself, on a platform carrying unstressed bolt-on panels, an aluminium bonnet and a fibreglass roof.

The Cheap One, the Estate, the Cabriolet The complexity was expensive, so Citroen made a simpler version. The ID 19 - dated 1956 by Motoring Research and 1957 by Ate Up With Motor and Petrolicious - kept the hydropneumatic suspension but replaced the power steering and hydraulic clutch with conventional items and used a detuned engine that sources put at 66 or 69 hp. From 1958 there was an estate, Break in France and Safari or Estate in Britain, with a steel roof in place of the saloon's fibreglass so a loaded rack could be carried, seven seats in Familiale form, and DS brakes even where the rest of the car was ID. Henri Chapron built a cabriolet on his own initiative in 1958; Citroen relented and had him build factory cars from 1960, sold through its dealers on a reinforced platform with doors four inches longer than the saloon's. Chapron also sold coupes on his own account - the Concorde, the Le Dandy - at roughly twice the price of a standard DS.

Bigger Engines and Opron's Nose A five-bearing 2,175 cc engine arrived for 1965 as the DS 21, with a 1,985 cc DS 20 beneath it. A conventional manual gearbox had become available in 1963; a five-speed followed in September 1970 and a Borg-Warner automatic in September 1971. The hydraulic fluid changed from hygroscopic, corrosive LHS to green mineral LHM, with sources placing the switch variously at 1966, 1967 and 1968. In late 1967, for the 1968 model year, Robert Opron reworked the front: four lamps behind a glazed cowl, the inner pair swivelling with the steering. Bosch electronic fuel injection reached the DS 21 for 1970, and in 1972-73 the 2,347 cc DS 23 topped the range. The ID gave way to the D Special and D Super in 1970.

America, and the End North America would not take the swivelling lamps. Citroenvie records a rule that no private vehicle may carry an external light whose direction is controlled from inside the car, and a 1 January 1971 deadline after which any new Citroen entering the United States or Canada needed a fixed, unshielded system; American cars ran four exposed sealed beams instead. Citroen announced in 1970 that meeting North American safety standards had become uneconomic. Production ended at Paris on 24 April 1975, by which time Citroen had passed to Peugeot.

The hydraulic system is not fragile, but it is unforgiving of neglect and of the wrong fluid. Spheres lose their nitrogen charge and are generally treated as a five-yearly item; a failed diaphragm means replacement rather than recharging. Corroded high-pressure pipework is routine, and the Citroen Car Club notes that when pressure is lost the system sheds functions in a defined order - steering assistance first, with warning, then suspension, then brakes. Early LHS fluid is hygroscopic, corrosive and prone to leaking, which is why so many surviving early cars have been converted. Engines are long-lived, with Petrolicious quoting 150,000 miles between rebuilds, but timing chains stretch and replacement is an engine-out job, camshaft seals leak at the distributor base, and Classics World reports big-end failure as most common on the 2,347 cc unit. Manual boxes crunch their synchromesh and five-speeds whine as the bearings dry. The BVH semi-automatic suffers internal leaks that make it jump out of second or third and a leaking selector plate that puts LHM into the gear oil.

Structure first, because the D-series hides its corrosion behind bolt-on panels that come off easily and tell you little until they do. Classics World singles out sills, boot floor, roof gutters where water traps and rots from the inside, and the area carrying the trailing arm mounts, and notes cracking around the front wishbone carrier bolts with repair quoted between GBP 200 and GBP 2,000. Petrolicious adds the lower rear corners of the front wings, door bottoms and the bodywork below faired-in headlamps, and warns that the aluminium bonnet can crack down the centre. On the hydraulics, listen to the pump: Classics World describes a tick roughly every thirty seconds as normal and anything more frequent as a leak, and says a car pushed down at each corner should sink willingly and rise softly, a firm response pointing at spent spheres. A permanently sagging car is a leak until proved otherwise. Establish which fluid the car is on and that it has never been mixed, because LHS and LHM use different seals and converting means replacing every unit and seal rather than topping up. Compression should read 120 to 140 psi per cylinder. On Pallas cars, confirm the mouldings and trim are present: small trim pieces are the hardest parts to find.

As of August 2026, classic.com gives an average Citroen DS sale price of $62,630 and a lowest recorded sale of $1,350 for a 1970 DS 20 on 28 January 2023; the benchmark tile and trend arrow did not render on either fetch, so no benchmark is quoted. Recent results there, all as of August 2026, run from a 1965 DS 21 Concorde at $95,200 on 14 August 2026 through a 1972 DS 21 Pallas at $35,000 on 6 August 2026 to a 1973 DS 23 Cabriolet at EUR 33,800 on 3 August 2026. Classic Trader, read in August 2026, showed 31 cars advertised from GBP 13,602 for a 1973 DS 20 to GBP 178,800 for a 1967 DS 21 Chapron, and a mainstream band of roughly EUR 20,000 to EUR 60,000 for saloons. Magneto's guide, read in August 2026, prices a 1971 DS 21 Pallas at GBP 11,300 fair, GBP 17,600 good, GBP 27,500 excellent and GBP 39,600 concours. Coachbuilt cars trade separately: RM Sotheby's sold Chapron Decapotables for $291,000 at Monterey 2021, $268,800 at Arizona 2022, $246,400 from the Elkhart Collection and EUR 195,500 at Paris 2023, and Artcurial sold a 1962 Concorde for EUR 153,120 at Retromobile in February 2017 and a 1965 Le Dandy for EUR 262,240 at Retromobile 2018. The lot pages print the sale name and result but not the date.