Grant Day James

Twenty years ago, the missus and I wandered off to Paris for our honeymoon and fell in love with the most beautiful little French car in the world - the humble 2CV. It seems that with every Parisian photo we took, it was nearly impossible not to include within the frame a cute little ‘deux chevaux’. It was a symbol of France and of the French people themselves. It was style, function, audacious practicality and personality. One could argue that it was more iconic than the Eiffel Tower itself. OK, that’s a big call, but it’s right up there with the baguette and the chocolate eclair anyway. We loved it so much that we eventually got one and, like fools, got another. Some would say this is a little crazy. Sometimes we say this of ourselves too. But we continued the delusion that we were over here in our little part of the world driving around in the very car that the French were driving around in over there. How wrong we have become.

Sadly folks, I can report that after returning to the land of the baguette, C.E and E.T. for the first time in twenty years, the better half and I discovered that while the latter are alive and well, the most beautiful little car ever created has all but disappeared. Of course, it was always going to happen, wasn’t it? Here in Australia, we hardly have FJ Holdens parked on every street corner do we? The French, like us, have moved on and have embraced the virtues of the Smart car, which is considerably smaller than the original ’smart’ 2CV, and is … well, everywhere. If I had the skills, I would post an interesting picture here of just how smart a Smart car is for the tight parking challenges that Paris provides, but I don’t. Watch this space though, because I’ll get someone with technical capability onto it shortly.