No, this is not write-up about some girl some-what lacking in the ability to produce melanin, yet somehow oddly attractive: that would be a “Gaelic chick”. The today’s admittedly large nosed subject of discussion is a certain French automobile: the Citroen C6. You see, Top Gear and a certain Dead Curious co-founder believe that the French are best at making clever little small cars, but they are just so fucking wrong that it’s not anywhere close to being funny. You see it happens to be the big, totally bonkers, large executive cars, which represent the hallmark of the French motorcar industry. The English, Italians, and Germans all make much better tiny little front-wheel drive hatchbacks, but only the Americans and the “frogs” do big brash front-drive quasi-luxury cars. Yes, there are myriad of reasons as to why no other automakers do this sort of car, but in a world where automotive homogenization has become the norm, I want something unique. Big French cars (and American ones as well) are so refreshingly different from the norm that I just feel some sort of magnetic attraction towards them. Citroen with the C6 has broken pretty much all the rules of conventional automotive design, but what do you expect from one of the only two nations building proper nuclear-powered aircraft carriers.
You have to give it to the French; they have this unique ability to make that, which should on the surface be absolute rubbish, into something fucking brilliant. They do it with food, secondarily fermented grape beverages (from what should be a piss-poor growing region), and the C6. This big, nose-heavy, front-drive car should drive like, well, crap, but thanks to a really clever active Hydro-pneumatic suspension it almost doesn’t. Could you practically steer it with your pinky, yes, but who gives shit? Look at the car. This is sculpture, which due to some really clever technology, works as a car. The boot lid is convex to match the concave rear windscreen, so what if it makes the opening too small for you’re date’s luggage when your driver comes to fetch you on the way to catch your train from Gare du Nord –and yes it will, trust me-. There is more than enough room in the front seat for her bag. You won’t care about the utter lack of rear seat headroom due to the sloping roofline, because the seats electrically recline. It wouldn’t be the official car of the French President if this were a real problem. Oh wait, scratch that last point, forgot about Sarkozy being a midget. Still, the car is so fucking gorgeous.
Citroen doesn’t currently offer the C6 for sale in any part of what they call the Anglo-sphere, but they did at one time. You can, everywhere but North America, buy a slightly used C6 for really very little money. Being a flagship car, even the cheap versions came spectacularly equipped, so you can get Bentleyesque levels of kit for the cost of a tiny shit-box runabout. That is not only value for money on a grand scale, but a great idea for a future Dead Curious project. We could buy a company C6, get an intern with their own insurance, and save a fortune on taxis for our London based staff, but that involves making actual money, damn. Anyway, you see my point. A car this brilliant is so completely lost on the masses that a savvy individual could buy one still under warranty and drive the same car as the fifth most powerful person in the world! This is a very limited production model, so exclusivity is part of the deal. However, it uses a Ford/Jag/PSA V6 diesel, and the other parts come from regular mass production Peugeots and Citroens. The servicing, unlike in a Bentley or Rolls, won’t cost anymore than a standard car. Plus, have you seen the women you get in a C6? You may want to follow the advice in the Saab review when you pull one of Mick Jagger’s exes, but with a C6 doing just that becomes a much more viable possibility. That is what the French do best!
