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Topic starter
09/07/2021 10:04 am
Summer's here and you know what that means - reruns. And I've seen a few here lately. Ten years ago this month I wrote this article - I've updated it and included some new photos.
Citroen 2CV Cogolin Fire Vehicle - the Bicéphale
This is one of those oddballs that makes collecting fire department vehicles so interesting. First, the real car:
In the 1950's a Colonel Hourcastagne of the SDIS in the French region Var had a problem turning around on a narrow mountain road in the forest at night. The solution was to create a car that didn't have to be turned around, and the result was two 2CVs cut in half with the two heads joined (hence the name Bicéphale). Each end had its own engine and steering gear - the unoccupied end would have its steering blocked when driven, and the second engine could be used to provide additional 1st gear drive when placed in reverse. So, three forest fire fighters could be carried up to the scene, and ferried back down the narrow mountain trails by one dedicated driver.
The actual car was withdrawn from service in the 1970's, went to a scrapyard, was rescued, but never restored. Erik DeWidt and Jeff and Susan Lane (of the Lane Museum in Nashville, Tennessee) concocted the idea of building a replica, and in 2007 it made its appearance at a Citroen meet in New York. A fascinating story about the real car and how the replica came to be is here (in French): https://2cv-legende.com/2cv-series-speciales/2cv-bicephale. You can see a couple of videos of it on YouTube, just Google “2CV Cogolin”.
Here are my own pictures of the replica on display at the Lane Museum in Nashville:
Now to the model. For such an obscure vehicle, there have been several models – a kit by MVI, an Elysee model I know nothing about, and a Hachette partwork. The Hachette was also made as a standard Norev model, and I located one at Modelauto back when Rod and Val Ward were still operating a mail order business. Norev No. 150079 is very well done. So much so that I contacted Jeff Lane at the Lane Museum to find out if the Norev was actually a copy of the replica in the museum. But no, he said no help was given directly to Norev.
Can you tell front from rear? The only difference is to look for the headlights - the model has black fixtures for taillights.