Citroën DS

The story

The DS is what happens when a car company lets an aircraft engineer and a sculptor finish their thoughts. Flaminio Bertoni gave it a smooth, tapering body with skirted rear wheels, and André Lefèbvre's team filled it with ideas the industry would spend decades copying: self-leveling hydropneumatic suspension, inboard front disc brakes, power steering, a clutchless hydraulic gearshift and, from 1967, swiveling headlights that followed the steering. Start it and the body rises off its haunches before it moves. Then it glides, treating cobbles and potholes as rumors.

Its weak point was under the hood. France taxed engines by size, so the most advanced sedan in the world made do with a 1.9-liter 4-cylinder descended from a prewar design, and the 6-cylinder engine it deserved never got funded. It hardly mattered. The DS family won the Monte Carlo Rally, came through an ambush of more than 140 rounds at Petit-Clamart with Charles de Gaulle aboard, and in Henri Chapron's hand-built convertible form became one of the loveliest shapes ever to wear a license plate. Citroën built 1,455,746 in all, and the oldest still look ahead of their time.