The Style of Flaminio Bertoni at Carlisle, PA. Meet…
May 25th, 2008 by Denis
This last weekend was a real treat at the annual Citroen Club of North America meeting, which every year just happens to coincide with the Carlisle Import Kit/Replicar National Car Show. The year’s featured speaker for the club was Kim Walter and was it ever a treat!
Kim is a very accomplished Industrial Art and Design professor at the Pratt Institute in New York. One of Kim’s passions is the wonderful designs of Flaminio Bertoni. Kim gave a very informative talk on several of the designs that Bertoni was responsible for when he worked at Citroën. They included the Traction Avant, the Ami 6, the 2CV and the DS. You can find more about Kim on the www.driveshesaid.com website.
For me, working on these beauties, I was always drawn to the cars for their many technical innovations and unique systems. This talk that Kim gave was so refreshing, for he pointed out some of the many lines and esthetic functions of the cars and how Bertoni arrived at them. Some of the lines that he pointed out on the Traction Avant I had never noticed, yet I have owned one for the last 21 years!
Check out some of these beauties… The first is Kim’s own D Model.
Here is a beautiful Ami 6…
And a sweet little 2CV…
Check out the curves on this beauty…
All together 43 Citroëns from the East Coast and the Mid West attended the meet, and I personally want to thank club member Brad Nauss, of Brad Nauss Automotive, for once again doing all the behind the scenes work to make this great meet not only happen, but get better each and every year. Here’s a shot of Brad and his Traction.
This is Paul Vogel’s Citroen D Model. He got best of show with this beauty.
We’ll be adding more pictures soon, so be sure to check back. Thanks to everyone who showed and see you all next year.
Later, Denis
Grazie del vostro ricordo delle auto di mio padre, vi rispondo in lingua italiana in quanto purtroppo conosco solo quella, ma per conoscere ed ammirare le auto di mio padre è sufficiente.
Leonardo Bertoni
Grazie a Denis del ricordo di mio padre
I am not sure to whom this email is being directed, but I hope I will receive a knowledgeable reply to my Citroen question. As a GI in France 1961–1963, I owned a 1952 Citroen Traction Avant 15CV/6 which I drove all over France, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, parts of Germany, Monaco and Northern Italy without a breakdown. Many a time I wished I had brought my “shrunken down gangster wagon” back to the States with me. Would you believe I bought it in 1961 for $125 with 6 cracks in the block and put a completely rebuilt engine in it for only $60. Wow!!! would I like to have it back now. Anyhow, of all the many, many hours I have spent looking at Citroens and Citroen information on the internet, I see nothing about 15CV’s. I have read that Citroen only manufactured 2 15CV’s for every 7 11CV’s. Strangely enough the only other GI I knew that had one also had a 15CV. Are they that impossible to find today? I am seriously contemplating going to France to find one. Are they impossible to get parts for. Repondez s’il vous plait. Merci Beaucoup.