BODY & SOUL

Henri Chapron's sympathetic adaptations of the Citroën DS improved on an already revered formula that would crown the model's legacy

- MARTIN BUCKLEY

As well as building the factory catalogued DS cabriolets for Citroën, Henri Chapron maintained a steady trade in small batches of more specialised variations on the same theme for a decade. These rare and glamorous trinkets have for years been the ultimate prize in the world of DS fancying.

A Chapron, the last of the great French coachbuilders, had forged his reputation building bodies for Delage and Delahaye in a Paris workshop that, at its peak, had employed 350 artisans producing 500 cars annually. But when the French government's post-war fiscal assault on large-engined luxury vehicles killed off the indigenous grande routière trade almost overnight, it looked as if Chapron, starved of body-on-frame raw material for his creations in an industry moving to unitary construction, might follow them into oblivion.

It's strange to reflect, then, that it was the introduction of the ultra-modern DS in 1955 that in effect saved - and reinvented - this very traditional, near-40-year-old business for its already near-70-year-old founder. The déesse (goddess) didn't have a chassis in the conventional sense, but central to the concept of this front-driven, hydro-pneumatically suspended wonder-car was its base unit construction, by which none of outer panels played any part in the rigidity of the body.