Word: citroen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Britain's largest non-nationalized industrial firms, has been forced to go, hubcap in hand, to Harold Wilson's Labor Government for a five-year loan of $230 million or so to help it get over a severe cash shortage caused by plunging sales. Peugeot and Citroen have sought and received financial backing from the French government for a desperation merger. Italy's Fiat, hit by a sharp decline in sales, is struggling to unload an inventory of some 345,000 unsold cars. Meanwhile, a variety of troubles have overtaken the largest auto manufacturer outside...
...terribly excited." ∎ President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, 48, promised to give the French a relaxed political style when he was elected last May. Now the French are wondering what he meant. Recently, the satirical weekly Canard Enchaine reported that the President's Citroen had collided with a milk truck at 5 a.m. in Paris. Last week it claimed that he is a security risk, too often out of touch with his Elysee Palace office and the red button that controls the force de frappe. ∎ Then for the first time, the nation's respected liberal daily...
...prosperous. And it is no longer only the privileged who share the wealth. A decade ago, a skilled worker in France, Germany, Italy or Belgium was likely to have ridden a bicycle or motorbike to work. Today he owns-or is saving to buy-a Volkswagen, Fiat or Citroen. He is almost certain to have a TV set (black-and-white, not color). He almost certainly has a savings account; and if he is lucky, he lives with his family in new, subsidized housing-architecturally undistinguished, but more comfortable than picturesque squalor...
Thus Roland Barthes's essay on "The New Citroen" and the magic of its attraction, in Mythologies. A smooth, silent, seamless object, the modern automobile speaks the myth of a nature which is miraculous and benign. No longer does the automobile express mere speed, but speed with natural grace. Its surface and shape defy the sense of touch, make it seem already in motion, and imply a nature which is orderly and self-coherent. It is like a goddess who brings the order of heaven down to earth--and prostitutes herself to every petit-bourgeois who can afford the monthly...
Because he has to speak out of myth, the mythologist can never interpret his object fully. Barthes himself speaks of a similar danger--that the mythologist may lose sight of the real object under all the interpretation. He may forget that the Citroen "is a technologically defined object: it is capable of a certain speed, it meets the wind in a certain way, etc." The total object, the sum of all its meanings, remains finally unreachable...