Citroen GS Bi Rotor

February 24th, 2008

YouTube Direct

When you think about the Wankel Rotary engine you instantly think about Mazda, some of you may also remember NSU the German car company that went broke after sinking a lot of money into the Rotary. There also was a third company who thought Rotaries would be good under their bonnet and that was Citroen with their GS Bi-Rotor. Between 1973 and 1977 a luxury version of the Citroen GS was sold with NSU’s rotary engine under the bonnet but when NSU fell in a heap Citroen were left with 847 cars on the road without a source of spare parts. Citroen’s solution was to recall them and buy them all back to be crushed and never mention the Rotary again. A few still survive as some customers loved them to much to sell them back to Citroen, the video above is a Citroen promotional video showing how Citroen did love the Rotary once too. It’s in French but the animations of how the rotary works is pretty cool if you don’t understand the language of the cheese eaters.   

Entry Filed under: Classic Cars | Tags: Citroen, Rotary