A graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique, France's most prestigious engineering college, Citroen (1878-1935), from a well-to-do Jewish family, was a hugely successful entrepreneur. His background enabled him to recognize the value of double-helical gears produced in Poland, sleeve-valve engines made in Belgium and mass-production methods developed in the U.S., a country with which he felt a special affinity. Large-scale industrial production, notes the author, "was the engineering challenge that really interested" Citroen. Always an innovator, he began direct-mail marketing, billboards and skywriting ads in France, so that by the early 1930s, Citroen was the fourth-largest automobile manufacturer in the world, after America's big three. A cultivated sophisticate fond of good living and gambling, Citroen overextended himself during the Depression, demonstrates Reynolds in his well-documented, instructive biography, lost control of his firm and died soon afterward. This biography is not just for car lovers but has much to say about the effects of industrial growth in the West and, even more interesting, about the role that subtle anti-Semitism may have played in the demise of Automobiles Citroen. Reynolds is a British freelance writer.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The French call automaker AndreCitroen the "most famous unknown man of our century," and he has also been labeled "the Henry Ford of France." Citroen, who died of stomach cancer in 1935 as his company faced insolvency, was certainly in his own way as colorful a figure as Ford. He was flamboyant and seemingly cared little about money; at the same time, he was socially and politically progressive. Citroen can be credited with bringing mass-production capability to France, which resulted in the successful munitions manufacturing effort of World War I. He built the largest automobile company in Europe, and each Citroen model bore the stamp of his personality. His 1920s advertisements targeted women, and he more than anyone else was responsible for the "motorization" of Europe. Reynolds, an auto enthusiast and freelance writer who has worked for Citroen, Ford, and Volkswagen, provides the well-documented detail that brings the accomplishments of Citroen life in this first English-language biography. David Rouse
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