24 Nov 05
The double-chevron Citroen badge
It could be argued that Citroen's very roots are in luxury and high-performance vehicles.
Andre Citroen - who started his engineering career manufacturing helical gears, symbolised in the Citroen double-chevron badge - joined the board of the struggling Mors company in 1908. He was tasked with saving the firm, which had been making motorised carriages and racing cars only affordable for the very wealthiest members of French society.
The company had been by founded by Louis Mors in 1874 as an electrical engineering firm. His sons, Louis Jnr and Emile, aiming to diversify, took over the business in 1880 and hired their first chief engineer, Henri Brasier, six years later.
Louis Jnr had bought a Panhard-Levassor in 1892, but with a background in electrical engineering, realised that electric-magneto ignition was a better bet than the hot-tube system used in most French cars of the time.
The first Mors, which had a rear-mounted, air-cooled two-cylinder engine, was launched in 1897 and proved to be an instant hit.
Besides production tourers - upright vehicles still bearing a resemblance to horse-drawn carriages - Mors made racing cars: its 2hp racer, with a front-mounted 7.3-litre, four-cylinder engine, won the 1900 Bordeaux-Perigeux-Bordeaux and Paris-Toulouse-Paris races at the hands of Alfred Levegh, and was the only car which could compete with the dominant Panhards.
Its most famous car, though, was the aerodynamic 60hp Grand Prix Dauphin, featuring a 10-litre V4 engine, which won the 1903 Paris-Madrid and Paris-Berlin races, plus the Gordon Bennett trials of 1904 and 1905. The V-layout, as also used by Lancia, was innovative at a time when most engines had straight or in-line cylinders; another new feature of the 60hp was its suspension layout, complete with shock absorbers. Its chain-driven rear wheels received power via four-speed transmission - again, a new concept at the time.
However, by 1908, poor progress in development of new models, depression in the French economy and general mismanagement had led to near-bankruptcy for the firm. It withdrew from racing and sales plummeted.
