The Citroën Méhari is 55: on the road with the nicest rubber duck

De Méhari began his life in turbulent times. While the student revolt of 1968 was in full swing in Paris and the streets of the French capital were burning, Citroën presented a small all-terrain vehicle on a golf course in the fashionable southern French resort of Deauville. It was a somewhat droll-looking whole, a cheerful model, built on the platform of the 2CV, with a plastic body. The name: Méhari – not only the name of a dromedary species, but also of a notorious unit of the French Foreign Legion, which uses camels as mounts. With that name Citroën showed that it saw its newcomer as a serious means of transport, not as a toy.

Full color brochures of the Méhari

Anyone who doubted the sense of the duck made of plastic could go in luxury full colour read brochures on glossy paper which target groups Citroën had in mind for its creation. And there were quite a few; from surf enthusiasts to greengrocers, from sea fishermen and dairy farmers to golfers: the Méhari was intended as a pack mule for professionals and hobbyists – lifestyle meets payload.

Bodywork Méhari van thermoplastic plastic

Funnily enough, it was precisely its unique bodywork that initially caused problems for the Méhari. ABS, or Acrylonitrile-Butadiene-Styrene, is a thermoplastic plastic (meaning it melts when heated) that is used for a thousand and one purposes. Lego bricks, for example, are made of it. And so the Méhari. In some countries, such as Germany, they took that “it melts when it heats up” story a little too literally. The legend arose that the Méhari’s ABS bodywork was flammable. Not so. ABS even burns badly; it gets hot, if it gets too hot it melts, but only above 400 degrees Celsius it catches fire.

So you don’t have to fear spontaneous combustion in the Méhari, but why? You can only find that out by driving it. And so we report to Ad van der Horst from Boerdonk in Brabant. This Citroen specialist provides us with a bright orange Méhari for a ride through the Brabant lanes. Fortunately it is not an over-restored copy; on the contrary. You can imagine that yesterday the car was still active in some orchard, transporting the picking staff and their daily produce.

Ad hands us the key without much ceremony, and kindly points us to the countless stickers with directions that are pasted in the Méhari. ‘Don’t smoke’, for example, and ‘Switch smoothly’. Because it’s not a sports car, of course. And even then, switching via the stick sticking out of the dashboard is a matter of getting used to anyway. We promise to behave properly and send the orange Citroën off the yard.

The power of the Duck, a two-cylinder with 28.5 hp.

It is to be feared that Ad will catch the necessary creaking and gnashing of teeth before we have disappeared from sight, because the gearbox requires a velvet hand, especially between second and third gear. On the other hand, the gear lever is pretty much the only control device in the Méhari, so we can devote our full attention to the gear changes. There are a few control buttons around the centrally placed speedometer, the handbrake protrudes from under the dashboard next to the gear lever and there are actually air vents mounted, that’s about it.

Of course we drive homeless and luckily we didn’t have to remove the cap ourselves; it takes about as much time as tearing down a bungalow tent – ​​it can probably go faster with a few practice sessions. What can’t go faster is the Méhari itself, if you want to go faster than 80 km / h. The familiar 602 cc air-cooled two-cylinder puts out a measly 28.5 horsepower and that means the speedometer never gets higher than halfway between 80 and 90 on the scale.

Driving Méhari is driving pleasure without speed

That is especially annoying in the first kilometers of the ride, especially when intrusive freight combinations roll their towering noses to within a few meters of the duck’s ass. But soon another feeling comes over you, the feeling that belongs to a car like this: you are moving forward. Slow and noisy, but you’re driving – that’s all it takes to get from A to B in one of the most minimalist modes of transport available: an engine, four wheels, four seats and a steering wheel. You realize again that driving pleasure does not have to have much to do with speed.
Even on the flat Brabant B-roads, driving a Méhari feels like an adventure – all senses are triggered. But it becomes equally clear that the Méhari no funcar is. It is not a lifestyle mobile pur sang. It is a worker, developed for those who in the late 1960s needed a workhorse on wheels on the farm, in the harbour, in the vineyard or at the vegetable auction. For such users, the Méhari was perfect. No wonder that the first duck with ABS sold almost 150,000 units in the almost twenty years that it was produced.

Technical data

• Two-cylinder boxer engine, air-cooled, longitudinally mounted, single camshaft, two valves per cylinder, Solex carburettor
• Cylinder capacity 602 cc
• Power 28.5 HP (21 KW) at 5,750 rpm
• max. torque 39 Nm at 3,900 rpm
• Four-speed manual transmission
• Front-wheel drive
• Plastic body on platform chassis
• Independent suspension all round, longitudinal arms, linked front and rear by tie rods and horizontal coil springs
• Drum brakes all around
• Tires 125×380 Michelin X
• Wheelbase 2,400 mm
• Dimensions (lxwx) 3.52 x 1.53 x 1.64 m
• Empty weight 570 kg
• Top speed 115 km/h

This story was previously published in AutoWeek Classics 7 2013