I suppose there’s really no wrong way to sell a car, though there are certainly ways that sound wrong, like, say, tying a fish to a balloon. Objectively, it’s difficult to tell just how that act of pescatarian levitation would work to get people into a given automobile, but Citroën decided to give it a try, anyway. And you know what? I think it kinda works!
The fish and balloon in question are from some early 1960s ads for the Citroën DS and ID, and were drawn, with charming roughness, by Hungarian-French cartoonist André François.
Here’s what the full ad looks like:
As you can see by the little schematic diagram of the Citroën hydropneumatic suspension setup, complete with its little sphere full of basically brake fluid, the goal of the balloonfish was to try and convey what the sensation of driving a DS was like. And, I suppose there’s far worse descriptions than “it’s like riding on a fish suspended by a balloon.”
Here, Citroën also employed the concept in commercials, so you can appreciate the motion, via watching it in motion, which hopefully will elicit some sort of emotion:
I don’t know what’s up with the mermaid/merman there, or the peculiar and haunting music, or the lack of umlauts in the name, but that commercial sure does a fine job animating what that suspension is doing, hidden under that sleek body.
Mon dieu, I love the unrelenting strangeness of old Citroën! Just when you think you’ve seen it all, along comes a sturgeon, floating by your face, and you know there’s still so much more to be delighted by.
The music in that DS/ID ad absolutely slaps. What a completely bonkers choice of soundtrack for a car ad. I’m a Renault guy but I don’t see Citroën as rivals at all. More like a weirdo but charming cousin who turns out to have a sense of humour. Classic Citroëns are some of the coolest cars ever made, from the 2CV to the SM, but also the CX, GS/GSA, or even the humble Visa. And they made the C6, one of the few modern cars that I truly love.
the soundtrack was great. These cars do kind of look like an alien from another planet. Music fits. I was glued to one of these at a car show for 3 hours once marveling at its wonderful weirdness.
I still rememeber a time when Deésses were a farily common sight – there was even an abandoned DS Safari that I admired rotting away for years, just a 5 minute bike ride away from where I lived. They still felt special no matter what. I grew up with some access to a personal car collection that included a few DS and what was claimed to be the first SM that came to Portugal, ordered right on the showroom floor at the 1970 Geneva Motor Show. Whenever I got to see those cars, nothing would captivate my attention more than the Citroëns, and this guy had a Forest Green Porsche 928.
Oui.
That’s not a balloon. It’s a sea apple.
They should have used a catfish in the ads.
Because that’s what I always thought the front end of these resembled.
Furthering my theory that French car design and marketing involved copious amounts of wine and a decision to not do what other people have done before
Fish + Balloon = Citroen
Fish + Lightbulb = Mr. Sparkle
Well, there you go fishbulb.
Boy, that body movement sure looks seasickening. Maybe that’s what the fish and the merfolk.
Day-ess. Day-ay-ay-ay-ay-ay me say day-ess.
Day-ess come and me wan’ float home.
Come mister rally man, rally me piranha,
Day-ess come and me wan’ float home.
Day-, me say day- me day-, me say day-ess.
Day-ess come and me wan’ float home.
One of my also Porsche driving car friends calls the DS the platypus of cars.
I love the DS, but think it’s spot on! Just SO strange on so many levels, but you can still keep one as a pet.
Having the spring AND the shock absorber built into the same quite simple device is just brilliant. Means you can replace “both” on the whole car in under an hour, and for $150 in parts.
The pump needed to drive them also powers steering, brakes and gear change, so really not that complicated. Just very different.
Would be cool if it also drove the windows, like on an old Mercedes-Benz W100 🙂
Dang. Wait until you discover the magic of a coilover.
Citroen’s attempts to popularize Pierre PoissonBallon as a rival to the Michelin man ultimately resulted in reports of floating fish carcasses getting tangled in the Eiffel Tower.
Bibendum no like ze fish.
And the fun part is that Citroen was owned by Michelin between 1934 and 1976.
( at first as a full subsidiary then as a partial one Fiat owning 15% of Citroen at some point )
As Johnny Carson used to say, “I did not know that,”
I just watched this one (and others) during my Citroën ad mini-festival last week. This group opens with a version of the balloon-fish that has a voiceover along with a couple of nouvelle vague inspired spots and a dual-language publicity film with DSes on three wheels cavorting on the Kyalami racetrack. (“Citroën – for people who love life” in a country where all lives most definitely did not matter at the time, and since the DS went out of production a year before the government caved and allowed domestic television, that one wasn’t on TV.)
According to google translation…. “The elasticity of air and the flexibility of water are combined for your comfort in the Citroen hydropneumatic suspension. In fact, on a DS or an ID 19, each wheel is connected to the body by a piston. This piston acts on a liquid which more or less compresses a gas contained in a suspension sphere. The opposing play of these two elements keeps the bodywork always horizontal.”
And then the chair turned into a crepe.
The music in that commercial really creeped me the math out.
Nena warned us this exact thing would start World War III
Yet strangely, failed to predict the fish.
Douglas Adams predicted the fish.
Only 98 more to go!
Oh man, you nail every single one-liner.