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by amelius 524 days ago
By the way, I always wondered why we got modern versions of the Mini and the Beetle, but not the 2CV.
5 comments

I guess the answer depends on which aspect of the 2CV is being replicated in the new version.

If its "outrageously small but can still take you and a goose to market", Citroën have a tiny little electric vehicle, the Ami, today.

If its "something simple enough that a farmer can weld the panels themselves", I fear those days are long gone, in the same way that the OG Land Rover Defender is no longer a car you can wrench on. The spiritual heir of such cars is probably a toyota hilux(?). Modern safety standards and the presence of complex electronics beneath every surface, to say nothing of the more complex sheet metal shapes, probably stop that idea in its tracks.

There's still simple cars being produced but they're aimed at the Chinese and Indian markets, same with motorcycles. Example is (was?) the Tata Nano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tata_Nano), at $2500 a very affordable and simple car, mainly aimed at motorcycle/scooter drivers.
Well since we're talking about Citroen I'll say where is the button I can press to make the car raise up 20 cm :-D Always loved watching my uncle come visit in their CX. We'd always wait to see the car start and lift up.
As someone who fixes basically everything until you can no longer tell it is a ship of thesis, I don't think complexity or safety features are the problem so much as not designing for or expecting someone to fix something in combination with extreme penny pinching in manufacture, so that there isn't enough material to anything for repairs to be done reasonably. If something breaks, the original material was at such a bare-minimum thickness and/or low quality alloy or plastic to start with that even the smallest defect in repair is a problem.

Its like trying to fix a single broken strand in a spider web, even with the tiniest thread you can find and the most delicate hands and tools, any manipulation of the web at all is likely to cause even more defects and any successful patch job will need to be way over-kill compared to what was originally broken. You can't just fix that one thread that broke, you gotta throw a large patch over the entire area and hope that the original spider thread designs that were undamaged will be able to hold up against your much stronger patch job.

There’s the Ineos Grenadier[1]

> The Grenadier was designed to be a modern replacement of the original Land Rover Defender, with boxy bodywork, a steel ladder chassis, beam axles with long-travel progressive-rate coil spring suspension (front and rear), and powered by a BMW B58 inline six turbocharged engine.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineos_Grenadier

It is a lot more complicated than a defender though, isn't it. It has electronics!
The Hilux went the other way: you can apply wrench to nut, but the odds of you needing to do so recede into the distance.
I thought one defining feature was the innovative front-to-rear linked suspension well suited for the poor road conditions in rural France of the fifties. Allegedly you could ride the car fairly comfortably across a freshly ploughed field.

Roads are mostly in better shape today, but in remote places of California there are still secondary roads where long-travel suspension is of benefit (partly explaining the popularity of pick-up trucks there).

For Defender there is Ineos Grenadier https://ineosgrenadier.com/
https://2cev.co.uk/ showed up on ev-youtube last year (but other than the drive train, it's going out of it's way to not actually be modern... the 2cv aesthetic of "you think a VW Bug is too fancy" kind of limits the options.)
Well but the modern Mini and Beetle are related to the classics in name only, not in spirit.
Was one 20 years ago, Citroen c5 or c3 or something. Maybe still is.
It doesn't have the iconic 2CV look ...
Nor do the new mini ever had the original mini look. The Daihatsu Trevis was much closer to the Issigonis Mini look than the new mini ever was.

I may be wrong but I don't think the 2cv has a design that can translate as easily to a newer version the same way as the beetle design could without being completely denatured. I think it would be easier to build a modern HY looking van.

The first generation C3 (FC/FN) was close to the 2CV. There was as well the C3 Pluriel, where the top could be removed, a little bit like the 2CV.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_C3

Because the 2CV is mostly replaced by the entire crossover and compact SUV market segment.