Photograph of a motor show: overview of French brands and Citroën

In this document

Page 3 presents a single black and white photograph, taken from a high angle, showing a motor show as a whole p. 3.

In the foreground, an automobile (saloon) is displayed on a circular podium surrounded by a white balustrade, itself encircled by a very dense crowd of visitors — men in suits and hats, a few women p. 3.

In the background, large hanging advertising panels identify the stands of the manufacturers present: CITROËN, FIAT, PEUGEOT (twice), TALBOT, as well as SIMCA VEDETTE p. 3. Other panels are mentioned as illegible, and other vehicles are scattered in the crowd in the background p. 3.

No date, precise location or caption accompanying the photograph appears in the transcript: the dating therefore remains unspecified.

Context

This type of photograph evokes, through its framing and the density of the crowd, the great post-war French motor shows, such as the Paris Motor Show, where the main manufacturers of the time — Citroën, Fiat, Peugeot, Talbot and Simca (with its Vedette range) — presented their models to the public.

The presence of the Simca Vedette range and the overall composition likely place the scene in the 1950s, a period when Paul Magès' career at the Citroën design office reached its peak with the presentation of the DS on 6 October 1955. The description suggests that the central vehicle could be a Citroën DS, whose presentation at the 1955 Paris Motor Show remained famous for the exceptional turnout it generated. This identification, however, is an assumption external to the document, which no visible inscription formally confirms.

Archivist's perspective

This photographic plate seems to have been kept by Paul Magès as testimony to the competitive context in which his work as an engineer at Citroën took place: it visually situates the brand among the great French and Italian automotive houses of the time p. 3.

If the vehicle in the centre of the image is indeed a Citroën DS, as the composition and the dense crowd suggest, this image could illustrate the public's reception during a landmark show for the culmination of research into hydropneumatic suspension, of which Magès was one of the main architects after years of work begun as early as 1944 (Hydropneumatic suspension plans with differential interaction (17 February 1944)) — a hypothesis which remains to be confirmed, however, as no inscription explicitly names the model.

This document finds a natural echo with the Photographs of Citroën vehicles (Traction Avant / DS), which document the vehicles themselves more directly rather than their public reception.