This past week I was up in Detroit with David, working on Important Autopian Things, and we decided to inspect the thriving local car culture by showing up to a Cars and Coffee meetup. Of course, we were really late (why the hell do these all have to start so damn early?) but we did get to see a few wonderful cars, and, almost as excitingly, people. One of these people was a French automotive engineer named Aurel, and he told me one of the most incredible, charming, and so so very strange things about the development of the Citroen 2CV that I’ve ever heard.
If you’re unfamiliar with the 2CV, that’s a terrible condition to be in, so let’s solve your problem really quick. Here, I made a whole video about the 2CV a few years back:
The basics are that the 2CV was designed to put France’s rural farmer population on motorized wheels, and off of cranky, slow (probably drunk) French horses. The project came to be when Pierre-Jules Boulanger, the man in charge of Citroën’s engineering and design departments after they were bought by Michelin in 1935, found himself stuck behind a farmer’s slow horse and cart.
This made Boulanger realize there needed to be a car for the peasants, something to replace the archaic horse carts, which is when Boulanger came up with his dream peasants’ car, not in the form of drawings or technical specs, but a set of requirements.
The fundamental requirements for the 2CV (also called the Deux Chevaux, or — in its early prototype stages — the TPV for “Trés Peitite Voiture,” or Very Small Car) were set in 1935 and were as follows:
The car should carry two farmers wearing clogs, 50 kg of potatoes or a keg, at a maximum speed of 60 kph with a target MPG of 78 (3 l/100km). Comfort would be key so eggs don’t break driving through fields and bumpy roads.
Also, it had to be dirt cheap, rugged, and simple to maintain and repair. The war paused the development of the TPV (though Boulanger did use the occupation period in France to do some really brilliant sabotage of the Nazi war effort) and then picked up again after the war, but with a slightly less austere (but not that much less) design.
From these humble origins it grew into France’s people’s car, for city and country people. It stayed in production from the end of WWII to 1990.
Okay, back to my interaction with Aurel.
I was asking Aurel about what seems to be one of the greatest examples of cheapskatery in all of motoring: Citroën 2CV Fourgonette vans using a split license plate so they’d only need one tiny little light bulb to illuminate it (from the middle out, with two windows on the light instead of one) instead of two lights illuminating from either side.
While this bonkers split-plate business is interesting, it can’t even hold a candle – or, in this case, a firefly – to what Aurel told me next: He once read that, in an attempt to eliminate the need for a battery on the car that would become the 2CV, there was some early experimenting with position and other running lights (you know, side lights, taillights, that sort of thing — but not headlights) that used actual, living fireflies and glow worms.
I, of course, was absolutely thrilled and hooked at this astounding example of some of the most Flinstones-sounding shit I’ve ever heard come out of France, or, really, anywhere. Glowing insects used as automotive lighting? Incredible! I seized Aurel by the shirt and, my eyes forming twin spirals of madness, demanded to know more, more, more.
Aurel came through!
The original source Aurel found back in 2008 was no longer online, but he had the foresight to save the fascinating text, which I couldn’t find on the Internet Archive, even, probably because I don’t have the original French. Here’s Aurel’s translation:
Alongside engineers, Boulanger offers opportunities and resources to scholars and experts whom only report to him.Frifshof (is it really a name ?) Lecoultre is Swiss and a doppelganger of Professor Calculus. He was first an astronomer at the Geneva Observatory before he moved to Paris and then joined Citroën. He is the man behind the glow-worms and fireflies. He raises and observes them to understand the way they “work”. Maybe he could use them for the TPV as Boulanger does not want to use a battery but regulation requires some lights. He also researched manta ray’s bones which turn luminescent when decaying. Similarly, he tried to develop a glowing paint to cover the fenders.
Wow. Just, just, wow. Glow worms and fireflies and glowing manta ray bones (do they even really have bones?) were considered by Boulanger himself. Thankfully, there is at least one confirmation of this story online:
For months, Pierre Boulanger tamed fireflies and lampyres to try to understand how they worked and see if it could be used on the TPV , instead of electricity . To balance the impulses of these brains, the laboratory, directed by Maurice Pompon, tests their findings and technical methods . Often Boulanger wants to find out for himself . He tries the models and with each evolution of the car, he wants to drive it in person. Thus are developed all sorts of surprising solutions : 1 oilcloth bodywork or even with phosphorescent wings.
The prototype being discussed in this part is a very early TPV prototype known as the Terrasson Prototype. This reference supports much of what Aurel found all those years ago: the attempt to replace electric lights with bioluminescent ones, attempts at training the insects (to, what, blink for a turn?), and the glowing fenders (called “phosphorescent wings,” using the British term) in that text.
Pictures of the Terrason prototype show an incredibly radical and brilliant car from Boulanger’s designs, but they feature a lone cyclopean electric light instead of a jar of fireflies, sadly.
Aurel suggested that the insect lights would likely have been for marker and position lights and taillights, with a dynamo-driven electric lamp for the headlight, anyway, since you can’t really expect all that much light from a bunch of glow worms.
I just can’t get the idea out of my head; using fireflies as lights feels like something out of a charming old storybook, a fable about the time the faeries and gnomes worked together to build cars for all the Good Farmers of France, if they would, in turn, provide magic millet for their queen, or something.
So far these are the only two references I’ve found, but I’d like to consider this article just the beginning; if there’s some sort of photo out there of a TPV with a jar of fireflies or glow worms mounted on the rear bumper, shining through a red lens to act as a taillight, I want to see it.
Badly.
So, if anyone knows anything or has even heard of this at all, please let me know! I’ll see if I can get ahold of Citroën’s archive department, too. It’s just too good to leave alone.
This made my day! Thank you, Jason
We need a “Best of” The Autopian magazine chock full of fascinating stuff like this, feel free to send me a free copy for the great idea :p
Outside-the-box thinking, perhaps, but very much inside-the-tube.
I appreciate the coverage of the subject, but “literally using fireflies” is a bit of s stretch. The way I read the quoted sources, Citroën tried to figure out “how fireflies work”, so the mechanism itself might be employed.
(Not fireflies in sealed-beams.)
I’ve read of the experiments with fireflies (lightnin’ bugs, we call ’em) as 2CV lights in the distant past — so distant I can’t recall where. But it was possibly in an old issue of the Citroën magazine “Double Chevron”.
I’m a 2CV owner, and my tin snail is the most comfortable-riding car I have ever owned. Not the quietest, not the quickest, but the most comfortable-riding. That high-amplitude suspension system works. I like the ride even better than that of a hydropneumatic Cit.
I want to see a video of Jason collecting fireflies. In a comic situation, with arbitrary deadlines imposed and such.
I just discovered this site and I can’t think of a better inaugural reading than classic Torchinsky waxing poetic about fireflies and Citroens. Beyond thrilled to see you guys writing again!
“I’ll see if I can get ahold of Citroën’s archive department, too”
Cutting the job for you.
Citröen archives : https://laventure-association.com/en/the-terre-blanche-archive-centre/
and if you want to have more fun with Peugeot riding along you can start from the main page : https://laventure-association.com/en/
Oh! I can make a comment now! Been logging in but unable to make a comment.
Love The Autopian! All the weird stuff is great, but fireflies!?! French Fantastic.
You’d have though going back to old timey paraffin lamps would have been the logical method for getting around electricity, but that was evidently too conventional for the minds at Citroen. Also, all that brass was probably more expensive than just using electric
I mean I’ve gotten angry at slow drivers before, but never design a cheap rugged vehicle for them angry.
Please tell me they had a wild goose compartment for the horn.
I’m actually kind of liking the idea of riding a drunk french horse. Make it a Percheron and we have a deal
Two farmers wearing clogs, potatoes and eggs.
I wonder if the modern equivalent is two Karens wearing Crocs, a piping hot latte without a lid and a Bichon Frise dog on a pillow bed in the back seat of a Lexus RX?
Would the dog bark? Would the latte spill? Would the Karens complain?
Man, that is really funny and deeply depressing all at the same time. Although I always thought Karens drove Toyota Highlanders; maybe there are slight regional variations.
Manta ray are cartilaginous fish, like other days, skate and sharks, so you’re quite right to question whether they have bones.
Simple question about the subject at hand, though: what happens when these insects need to be fed? Or when they die? Surely the car would be expected to outlast an insect’s lifespan?
*like other rays. FSMdamnit.
No, it’s fine. Most of my days have gotten pretty boneless lately.
There’s a pill for that.
Well you just pick up some more fireflies at your local Citroen distributor or parts house, of course. Beware of imitations.
Still easier to change out than many modern cars headlight bulbs.
“a fable about the time the faeries and gnomes worked together to build cars for all the Good Farmers of France, if they would, in turn, provide magic millet for their queen”. This. This right here screams to be developed into a childrens book, right? To get those little petrolheads hummin’!
By the way; this article is exactly the reason why I’m a fan, Torch!
French farmers and autoworkers are lucky that radium paint was more expensive then electric market lights.
marker
I was thinking the same thing. Although Madame Marie Curie died in 1934 from radiation poisoning in France so maybe someone caught on to that and figured radium infused paint was a bad idea.
That was just one year prior to “The project came to be when Pierre-Jules Boulanger, the man in charge of Citroën’s engineering and design departments after they were bought by Michelin in 1935, found himself stuck behind a farmer’s slow horse and cart.”
I don’t think it had caught up in 1934.
Especially since her daughter ( Irène Joliot-Curie ) also died from a leukemia tied to polonium and x-ray exposure.
“French farmers and autoworkers are lucky that radium paint was more expensive then electric market lights.”
Eh, just don’t lick it and you’ll be fine.
That’s good advice, generally.
Bumper sticker candidate, there!
It’s not exactly breaking news, but the Turtle—the very first submarine—used foxfire to illuminate its gauges. It’s dark down there, we had a Revolutionary War-era understanding of electricity, and fire was right out since there was no way of storing or generating oxygen at the time. So, the designers turned to bioluminescence. I always thought that was some very smart, outside-the-box thinking.
It’s breaking news to me! And I’m a big fan of the Turtle!
How cool is that?!
Slightly related, did you know that here in NC we have a species of firefly that flashes synchronously? They start off flashing like normal, but over a bit of time, they get into harmony. Very cool. Also related, I always liked when the turn signals of cars in front of me flashed together for that brief moment when they matched.
And what’s weirder is that it seems to be connected to that location because I’m in central VA and we have those same ones (sort of a “Sport Tennis Shoe” style insect) but they can only get really close to perfect synchronization.
Also if I could, here would go The Office Screensaver Hits Corner Dot Gif, because duh.
Nothing, and at the same time everything, I read about Citroen surprises me. And that’s what makes them such a delight.
The early sedans also had the split license plates as visible on one of the pictures here: http://www.citroenet.org.uk/passenger-cars/michelin/2cv/history/1958.html
By the way, citroenet.org.uk is a great English language resource for all things Citroen.
Dig Torch dig! The world needs to know about crazy shit like this!
I don’t think the French Farmers wouldn’t have taken a shine to that
Jason, with every passing day I am more and more glad The Autopian exists. It is absolutely EVERYTHING I never knew I wanted in a car-interest blog!