How could we forget it? It was synonymous with travel, freedom, lightheartedness and those with white hair cannot help but feel a shiver of nostalgia when hearing that name borrowed from a breed of dromedaries. Its bodywork was equipped with only 11 components and in 1968, the year of its launch, it was defined as an “unidentified mobile object”, and then became an iconic vehicle in the automotive world, but also in sectors as diverse as the French army or cinema.
Presentation on the Deauville golf course
On May 16, 1968, Citroën organized its presentation on the Deauville golf course.. The car offered 28 to 32 hp, a body in ABS plastic (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene) designed by Roland de La Poype. Built on the Dyane 6 platform, it was initially presented with the name Dyane 6 Méhari and then simply became Méhari. It all started from an intuition. “In 1947, in France, the SEAB (Société d’études et d’applications des patents) founded by the French entrepreneur Roland de la Poype, it dealt with innovative materials“, in particular plastic and mass-coloured resins”, they tell the parent company. “The fleet of SEAB vehicles included a certain number of AZU and AK vans, those made by Citroën on the mechanical base of the 2CV and the AMI6. One day, one of these had an accident of some importance. The driver of the vehicle came out of it substantially unscathed, the bodywork of the van was seriously damaged while the mechanics were untouched. De la Poype did not have the van repaired because he had other plans for it: he wanted to make a plastic body himself to apply to the Citroën mechanics, creating a totally new commercial vehicle, capable of taking on irregular loads, even bulky ones, that was like a pick-up but also offered the possibility of closing like a van or opening completely, like a spider. Several drawings and some prototypes were made, also with the help of designer Jean-Louis Barrault, who had already collaborated on the creation of SEAB’s first successful product, the Berlingot disposable sample container, dedicated to L’Oréal. In the end, ABS was chosen for the bodywork: an easily thermoformable, flexible material that can be coloured in the mass. The result was a small plastic off-road vehicle, based on the chassis of the AZU twin-cylinder, which was presented to Citroën’s General Management. The meeting took place in 1967 in the basement of the Quai de Javel factory, in the centre of Paris, next to the Seine. Pierre Bercot, General Manager of the Brand, and the Head of Commercial Vehicles were present for Citroën, while Barrault and De la Poype himself were present for SEAB. It was not the first time they met: SEAB was on Citroën’s list of suppliers, for which it produced door panels, dashboards and other plastic parts, all well-made objects but often late with the agreed deadlines. For this reason, when De la Poype said “you will supply us with the chassis and we will build and assemble the bodies”, Bercot broke into one of his proverbial smiles and replied “absolutely not: we will build it and you will worry about the stamping of the parts”. It took Bercot no more than ten minutes to understand the potential of the future Méhari”.
Three versions
Despite being produced for almost 20 years, The Méhari has only had three different versions, two of which were limited editions.. Furthermore, Citroën decided to create a limited number of colors, with names linked to large deserts and mountain ranges, which changed little during the almost twenty years of production of the Méhari: Rouge Hopi, Vert Tibesti, Vert Montana, Orange Kirghiz, Beige Kalahari, Beige Hoggar, Jaune Atacama and, for the special “Azur” version only, also white and blue. In 1983, two special editions were launched: the Méhari plage, with a holiday look and a bright yellow colour, sold in Spain and Portugal. In April 1983, the Mehari Azur It was launched on the French, Italian and Portuguese markets in just 700 units. In 1979, Citroën introduced a new variant with the 4×4 version, which offered a freedom that is still almost unmatched today.
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