How can new contributions be made today.I remember fitting one of the curly brake pipes made up by Centreville, at the back of the Xantia on the pavement outside Centreville in February after the MOT tester had generated a leak with his poking and prodding.
A few suggestionsI have a time capsule of the Main Citroen Dealers across the country here to consult from a 1971 Earls Court Motor Show Programme. Have a look...I presume many of them will have gone, What do you remember of them?Who are/were the Citroen/ other French specialists local to you
Which ones continue, which ones have gone the way of Centreville.
Here is a small one from me. Where do you get shiny new joiners from
I think there is enough scope for a few additions to the thread today If I had the ability to change the thread title I could change it to "Centreville and Perkins Garage (Subaru Franchise) closed! " Just hope Wingrove make it to 2025 although Stellantis themselves may be out of business by then, but no doubt BYD, SAIC, MG, Geely, Great Wall etc will be looking for suitable partners.mickthemaverick wrote: 25 Feb 2023, 11:41 Too spooky to be believed - but I promise this is absolutely what just happened!!!
Within a couple of seconds of me 'submitting' the last post SWMBO brought today's post in to me. I was slightly bemused by one letter in this envelope:
so I opened it to read this:
Is this a sign?
Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BuchetBuchet was a French motorcycle and automobile manufacturer between 1899 and 1930.
Factory:Ivry, France (1888 - 1919)
73 Rue de Sèvres, Billancourt, France (1919-1930)
Paris showroom
68 Avenue de la Grande Armée, Paris
Neil
At the end of the 1950s, Malartre tracked down this Buchet C2 for Mahy. The Buchet dated from the Roaring Twenties and had to compete with the Bébé designed by Bugatti for Peugeot. The revolutionary and racy C2 ran on Michelin tyres and was one of the first cars with two doors. Until then, the passenger climbed in alongside the driver only after he had cranked the engine into action, which meant that only one door was necessary. The front of the Buchet was made completely from metal. The cockpit was chestnut, largely because there were many chestnut trees in and around Paris, where the Buchet factory was located. A thin metal plate was then carefully hammered over the wood. During the 1920s, it also became the custom for cars to be brightly coloured through the addition of a thick layer of oil paint – hence the turquoise craquelé, which resembles a dancer’s dress as it might have been painted by Degas! Before the First World War, Elie-Victor Buchet had earned a reputation as a daring and innovative engineer. After the war, this fire was gone. Now, he was prepared to live on his past successes, as a result of which he came to be seen as too conservative. Not surprisingly, production and sales began to fall, eventually leading to the closure of the company in 1929.
With its copper-carbon headlights and S.A.M. radiator grille from the Avenue Montbarbon, the Buchet was much sought after in the 1950s by French scrap metal dealers. Copper was urgently needed to make weapons for the war in Indo-China and therefore fetched a good price. As a result, only a very few Buchets were saved from the car press. Ghislain Mahy paid Malartre 3,000 Belgian francs for this 1923 model: marginally more than its scrap value.
Make? Buchet
Model/type? C2
Coachwork? Buchet
Construction year? 1923
Colour coachwork ?Blue
Engine? 4-cylinder
displacement? 1551 cc
Gearbox? Manual
Inviting for a dig through to see how many of the specialists remain, we know Centreville has gone!DickieG wrote: 06 Jul 2010, 16:39 Try Citart, or Chyparse or Dirk Sassen or Citron Pieces or Der Franzose for new parts direct (IIRC all of the above speak English) or for UK based sellers who mostly get their supplies from the ones above and also sell second hand parts try DS Workshop or Centreville or Brodie Engineering or Peacock Engineering or Citroën Classic's. BTW Darrin @ Citroën Classic's is a fellow Kiwi
That should give you enough to go on for a while
Looks like you did a bit of photography on one of your visits Stevemyglaren wrote: 25 Feb 2023, 14:38 The ultimate low-profile tyres!
I was wondering why I had been to Centreville garage and it just came to me that it was to collect a huge load of workshop manuals for Malcolm (Citronut) several years ago.
Neil
