KEEPERS
Bob was looking for a 2CV van when he was gifted the remains of a rare Citroën Bijou that was due to be scrapped
I bought a restored Bijou 32years ago; almost no one knew what it was. A firm called James Whitson – later CF Plastics in Crowthorne, Berkshire – had the idea to re-body the 2CV and commissioned Lotus designer Kirwan Taylor to draw this GRP body. A couple of hundred cars were sold but only a handful survive.
I loved driving my Bijou and then started looking for an early 2CV van to keep it company. But out of the blue a friend who knew of another Bijou that was about to be sent to landfill suddenly approached me. The owner had driven the car all over Europe with his family for many years before he decided to restore it. As so often happens, the dismantled parts were then left in a shed for 20 years until the owner – by now in poor health and moving house – advertised it for sale.
No one wanted to take it on so I was given what was left of the car on the understanding that the owner wanted it back once it was finished. I agreed, so my wife and I loaded all the parts into a van and brought them home where the “kit” went into our garden shed while we took stock of exactly what we had on our hands.
We still have our yellow Bijou as a pattern – so we copied any of the mistakes that if the restorer made! This Bijou is number 86 of 213. We had an exact pattern chassis made up and then bought a scrap 2CV with a good engine and installed that car’s 602cc motor in place of the missing 425cc unit because we like to travel far and wide to Citroën club events. But, other than the wheels and engine, the car was all there so it’s actually largely original.
The seats were shabby so we got a local trimmer re-cover them. But my wife and I did the rest of the work ourselves. I think our biggest fear was damaging the windscreen, because it’s bespoke. I don’t know where we’ll find a replacement if it ever cracks.
We moved the car from the shed to the garage as the build progressed and, four years later, were ready to go. We didn’t have a V5 so getting the DVLA to let us put the car back on the road was the toughest part of the restoration and the former owner had died by the time they were satisfied of its provenance. We managed to locate his son who was living in Australia by that time and sent him some photos of the car and he told us that it was just as he remembered it from his childhood.
We’ve had some great adventures in it, including drives to the Citroën National Rally in Horncastle, Lincolnshire in 2017 and the equally memorable Centenary Rally at Coombe Abbey Park in Warwickshire in 2019.
We considered re-painting the car but it’s
