Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "American Reacts to Old Citroën Suspension torture Testing VS other cars" video.

@pistonburner6448 In the mountains? The BX is a very light car that came into it's own with the 1.9, with it's great brakes and it's predictable handling I think it's very realistic. If you put a racing driver into a 6 cylinder BMW it would be faster, but you don't need to be a specially skilled driver to drive the BX close to it's limits.
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Talking about racing, in 1981 Dubai held a Grand Prix and payed a lot of money to have all F1 drivers race eachother in CX-es. Many drivers soon found out that staying on track wasn't as essential as in a normal racing car, competitive as they are the F1 drivers started maximizing on the car's capabilities by driving off track and cutting corners a lot.
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The GS was small light saloon, a 1000kg car. This kind of ride quality was even more unique for this size, but with the birotor wankel engine it would have been faster than the Golf (Rabbit) GTI of a few years later. I agree Citroen somehow always ended up with an underpowered model range, often only introducing the bigger engines later giving the cars a reputation for not being sporty enough. If the BX was introduced with the 1.9 it would defenitely been car of the year, but is was introduced as 1.4 to 1.6 litre car.
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@pistonburner6448 The BX is basically a 1000kg car while contemporary BMW and Mercedes that can carry 5 people are 1300-1500kg cars. That matters in the mountains. I do agree about BMW actually. It's a much more driver and speed oriented car. But I'm not going to exploit it's entire driveability in the Norvegian mountains. I don't want power oversteer where there is big drop off a few meters away. The BX is easy to drive and rather foolproof so you can safely get pretty close to it's road holding limits. Maybe a bit of understeer if you were too optimistic, no drama, no adrenaline rush. He was not speaking about lap times on the Nurnburgring. The weight distribution is excellent, allthough not as extreme to the front as in the CX. A 50/50 weight distribution is great for a car at the limit, but that does not mean that every car is better the closer it is to it. Citroen never wanted that, it's all about the front end and the rear just follows. That's a good road holding characteristic, it's just that a skilled driver on the limit can go much quicker in a 50/50 rear wheel drive, especially when he knows that Norvegian mountain road well. Citroen was not in the market for the BMW driver, the people who want/pretend to be skillfull at the limit and want to get as much feedback from the road and don't mind loosing a few fillings and wear a kidney belt in Belgium. But that doesn't mean it isn't a joy to drive quickly in the mountains in it's own way.
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@pistonburner6448 Yes, but the hydropneumatic system has a much smaller trade off between comfort and road holding than coil springs, because it's both progressive and self levelling, regardless of the priorities. But if you were to prioritize handling, the system is a bit less superior and probably won't give the same feel as coil springs anyway, so Citroen didn't. If you want the same comfort with coil springs, the road holding would be terrible, so terrible it would be uncomfortable. I'd say it's pretty competent and enjoyable in general, and it takes very good specialized driver's cars like BMW's and Alfa's to be more competent, when the driver pushes it. Only some Mercedes. It's only 0.3 but the 1.9 really elevated the BX much higher, it came into it's own. I just recognized his feeling, there you are in the mountains with your rather cheap 100hp saloon and you just don't see any cars being superior for that road. They might be, but it takes a skilled driver and race to show. You interpreted as that as it was better for mountain roads than a BMW, I don't think that was what he meant.
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@annebokma4637 You'll find it on YT, it's actually not such a good watch as it sounds.
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Yes, often doing pop up race events on some construction site until the police comes. But also 'proper championships' organized by some anarchist colony.
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@pistonburner6448 Contemporary also means from the same era. Then we had a lot of Mercedes that weren't particularly quick to begin with, and the 80's 3 series is simply a smaller car, the early 90's 3 series is simply a significantly heavier car. I agree BMW's were the better 'driver's cars'. But that's not the issue here, this is about a comfortable rather cheap 5-seater being a joy to drive quickly in the mountains. Not because it's designed to go as fast as possible there or give the optimal driving sensation to the owner who likes to think of himself as a particularly good driver, but because it's very good and has some qualities to spare.
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@pistonburner6448 What escaped you is that lack of follow up oversteer is what Citroen was particularly good at. Maybe that has to with the weight distribution and suspension? That I admit doesn't give a strong feel, it gives enough feel but not the feel of being connected to the road firmly. I'm not a FWD fundamentalist at all, Citroen is more the exception actually. I am indeed not a competitive driver. It's not my identity, I am not desperate to tell something about myself with the car I drive, I don't need to beat cars on mountain roads, I just like it when the car turns out to be very capable and quick despite it being designed to excell otherwise. It's a bit like finding out that your BMW 3 series is roomy and extremely comfortable for the passengers on very long trips on bad roads too. It's just that that won't happen. A BX 1.9 effortlessly driving away from Mercedes and BMW's without competitive drivers in the mountains does happen. Not because it's faster on the limit, but because it's easy to drive it quickly.
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@pistonburner6448 No, that was not the claim. The claim was "no problem leaving Mercedes and BMW's behind me". So it was effortless and he left those behind because they were driving less quick. That doesn't imply they weren't able to follow if they really tried. You go on about faster because you assume they competed and were trying to go faster, not even all BMW drivers are like that all the time. Most people drive on roads they don't know at a speed where they are comfortable with and the car is comfortable with. That means that with a lot of 80's and 90's cars you wouldn't leave BMW's and Mercedes behind because those simply do a higher speed comfortably, if a VW Passat driver and a BMW driver aren't trying to go as fast as possible the BMW will still go faster because it's comfortable in a different speed window. But the BX 1.9 is good in the mountains, very good for the comfortable 5 seater it is. So than that happens often.
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@pistonburner6448 It's true purpose? You mean a narrowed down window of operation to track and good quality roads with no heavy load? That's fine, roads have hugely improved the past decades outside Belgium, but it seems to me the true purpose of a suspension system is to keep the tyres following the surface in accordance with the driver's steering and pedal input. Within that there are specilizations, like cornering fast on a smooth surface, or the ability to both be comfortable and handle very rough surfaces, like the Range Rover. Please automakers, be true to your chosen purpose, your window you narrowed down to excell within, be the most BMW you can be, I appreciate that, not BMW building SUV's. I don't believe BMW should have switched to hydropneumatic suspension ever in history. It's not the party trick that made the hydropneumatic system superior, that was just something that came with concept, which had both the progressive nature of the suspension and the self levelling nature. That simply made for less trade off between road holding and stability vs comfort. I think Mercedes was able to tune a suspension and innovate on geometry too, and you see the result when Germans test it against a far more comfortable Citroen in the video abover. Mercedes btw that copied the Citroen system for it's top model above and almost twice expensive as the regular top model, the 450 SEL 6.9, often called the best car in the world, a chauffeur's limo and a driver's car in one. Air suspension never matched hydropneumatic suspension, or came close, Mercedes did a good job on the 600 and 300 SEL 6.3, but switched to the superior system for their newest top car. Mercedes and Citroen engineers were very much alike, they are innovative, stubborn and know what's best. What we see now is after decades of allmost all automotive engineers working to improve coil springs and almost non on the hydropneumatic, coil springs have massively improved. Dampers being electronically controlled, magnet powered, using gas properties like a hydropneumatic system, whatever, I'm not into the details I just know that there is a lot great engineering involved. What we have here is a competition between an excellent concept that worked great from the start because it was brilliant and simple, and we have lots of great engineers tinkering with a concept that started as an improvement on the leaf spring, according to most except Chevrolet. A break even point, a tipping point, was never unexpected in those circumstances and I believe it's behind us by now. But certainly not around 1990, the hydropneumatic suspension made the BX 1.9 perform in the mountains like cars much sportier or powerful and expensive.
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It was a really small and ligth car, well under 1000kg. But it still allowed for a 4000km family vacation in supreme comfort.
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True, but the 2CV had a kind of self levelling suspension too because the front and rear were connected. That worked great to compensate for the softness for that extremely light car. But it lacked the progressive suspension of the hydropneumatics and the side to side and static self levelling of the pressure suspension.
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English? Yeah right. Citroens have had their errors with the first series of new models and switched to rather flimsy plastics in the late 70's, but often ended with pretty robust and reliable cars. It's not fair to blame them for Lancia or Alfa electrics or Renault or (recent) Peugeot build quality.
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Indeed the moose avoidance test. The moose test is about hitting a moose on the windshield, in which the 2CV wouldn't do that great.
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@stephenberry8658 Otoh, there's a lot of empty space in Australia for the evasive move.
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The Mercedes 600 would merit it's own reaction video, but I believe it had an hydraulic system rather than a hydropneumatic. Also the windows were hydraulic so they could move up and down faster, a ridiculous expensive system to repair. Mecedes used a Citroen lilke system on the 450 SEL 6.9, the top model luxury saloon that was almost twice as expensive as the ordinary top model, 450 SEL with the normal sized V8. Allthoug very different cars I believe the Citroen and Mercedes engineers are very similar. They are stubborn innovators who simply know best and come up with designs that take a bit of getting used too.
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@clivewilliams3661 Yes, but it's also a bit what you call cruising speed with a 4speed and lots of revs. My dad hardly ever went over 130 in the GSA break (don't know about that PITA) because of the noise. Even the Renault 17 had something like 20 hp more, and because it was quite roomy and extremely comfortable, the birotor or a similar powerful engine would have put it in a higher class than it ended up in. I think the German, British and Italian four door saloons, their middle class, tended to have bigger engines, heavier and more expensive than the French. The predecessors of the Vectra and the Sierra rather than the Escort. Another indication it was underpowered is that the next engine on sale was the 2.0 litre in the CX. That's guite a gap from a 1.2 just like it is with the 1.9 of it's successor. Had the Birotor succeeded it would have been a choice between the fast smaller GS or the bigger and slow CX 2.O. Also if they had managed to fit a 1.8 or 2.0 they could have made a more luxurious version like the Birotor was. But no one wants leather or velours and lots of accesoires in a 1.2. I think it limited the top end of the model range hugely. Also toward the end of it's life, 60 hp was far less impressive in 1980 than in 1970.
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@clivewilliams3661 I don't know, I still have to buy my first SM. Was it supposed to be faster? It was a GT, not a sportscar. I don't think many owners now are looking envious at that biturbo, and there probably isn't space under the hood. I've always seen it as Citroen's most well rounded car at introduction.
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@clivewilliams3661 I don't agree, those cars were less roomy and had bigger engines, often a 1.8 or even a 2.0. But the GS was designed for the compact Biroter and couldn't fit a big 4. The Birotor was defenitely in a class above those, but failed. Those also weren't four door, which quite essential for a slighter higher class of car. Just like Citroen failed to get a flat 6 in the DS, the CX was also designed with the much compacter Wankel engine in mind. Because the BX was the successor to the GS it didn't make a huge jump in engine size because customer used to buy successors of what they had back then. I don't remember if the 1.9 in the BX was planned for the introduction, but I wouldn't be surprised. It's hard to break free from a history of underpowerment through failed projects. While they also had to size up their class range a bit to better compete with the Germans. They only succeeded with the Xantia, that was proper Vectra, Sierra/Mondeo, Passat, Audi 90 class, the 2 liter 4 door. But they needed the ZX too to not loose market share of the BX successor. So the failure of 2 engines for 3 models at the top end, kept Citroen down in class for very long because that was passed down the generations. And when their top car finally got a V6, it wasn't really a top V6.
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@clivewilliams3661 The GS was longer and had a longer wheelbase than them all. Not much but it was much roomier. This is of course about the top end and they all had engines going up to 1700, 1800 and some even 2.0 or 2.2, often DOHC. 4-door coming as an option later does not really define the class. The VW Golf 4-door is still a smaller car. Classes were less matched over the brands back then, but Citroen missed out on matching the competition's classes that emerged later because of the engine troubles Had the Birotor succeeded there would stil have been a huge gap in the motor range, still a 1700 or a less thirsty wankel would have been desirable. The interior was also made to a much higher specification bridging the gap to the cheapest DS and later CX entirely. This is not about 0.1 or 0.2 less in a better engine, this is about 0.5 up to 1.0 litre difference, that's a different class of engine that would have lifted an already bigger, roomier, far more comfortable car to the higher class it belonged in.
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@clivewilliams3661 You forget about the Opel Ascona/Vectra, Ford Taunus/Sierra, VW Passat class. The French came from a slightly smaller class, true, but that's where they went. That's where the model under the DS/CX/XM should have been. This is an important family class but also a salesmen, lower executive class and if you have a client or collegue over 30 to give a ride you want them get in with some dignity, so the 4door saloon is quite essential to that class. It is also a typical 2 litre class, it doesn't go down to 1.2 litre, maybe 1.8. Because it was a little bit bigger, much roomer and far more comfortable, Citroen could have been in that class in it's own compact lightweight way. I think we can agree you want a range of models without large gaps that competes against ranges of models across borders. Especially if you simply build the better cars in case of Citroen. Without the Birotor, Citroen had a huge gap towards the DS/CX and even a gap towards the direct French smaller competition on engine size of about 0.5 liter. That was even bigger to the German/British 4door class around 2.0 litre which it could have aspired to with a much, much bigger engine. It took until the Xantia, that needed the ZX not to leave another gap beneath, to close that gap entirely.
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Because the hydropneumatic system is progressive, there is simply far less trade off between handling an comfort. It's simply superior because of that but it naturally excells at the comfort end, with the self levelling as a handling bonus on top the progressive suspension. Lots of people simply don't like that because they want a car to feel stiff, to feel it's made for handling. Another way of looking at it is to make a distinction between handling and road holding, and Citroens hold the roads much better than they handle. I'm not much of a part time Verstappen myself, but I feel like their cornering ability is underestimated by the sporty drivers because the are comfortable, they roll and don't give that much strong feedback. The 2CV doesn't have hydropneumatics, it just has a brilliant coil spring system that works great in such a light car.
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To be fair, Mercedes had a reputation for it's suspension too. The difference is they had to engineer around the limitations of coil springs and did that very well. Citroen started from a superior working principle.
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@pistonburner6448 Mercedes did copy the Citroen system for it's very best car, it's showpiece, the 450SEL 6.9, a legendary good car. So why in the video above is the RWD Mercedes with it's praised suspension geometry struggling where the Citroen is shining? Why would that be different in the Norvegian mountains with a BX 1.9 and BMW's and Mercedesses? These days with no further development on the hydropneumatic system that was good because it's concept rather than it's development anyway, and the coil springs becoming part of sophisticated, refined and complicated suspension systems the picture is very different. Citroens had absolutely great road holding for a comfortable car, and they were even extremely comfortable cars. I saw a video in which someone took a Citroen to make the distinction between handling and road holding and I can see what he means. The BX is not a great handling car, it's very good at road holding. It doesn't let the driver shine, feel a great driver, it just hangs in and is forgiving. But it's really quick in the mountains that way.
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