UK’s rarest cars: 1979 Citroen CX 2400 GTi, one of only three left on British roads

Perhaps the highest compliment that may be paid to Neil Osborn’s Citroën CX is that it looks almost contemporary. Little can date faster than yesterday’s vision of the future but this dramatic machine can easily blend with modern-day traffic – a remarkable achievement given that the CX made its bow at the 1974 Paris motor show.

It was also the last car that Citroen designed entirely in-house prior to its acquisition by Peugeot. Naturally, the latest Citroën had the formidable task of succeeding the long-running DS and the marque expert Julian Marsh saw it as “evolutionary rather than revolutionary”.

For many, a front-wheel-drive car with hydropneumatic self-levelling suspension, PAS and that Robert Opron bodywork was remarkable enough. Motor stated the CX  was “surely one of the most beautiful production cars of all time” and pictures of the original versions makes it difficult to believe they existed in the same world as the  Morris Marina. 

The CX was declared Car of The Year 1975 and right-hand-drive production commenced later that year. In 1977 Citroen introduced the GTi, which was powered by a 2,437cc four-cylinder engine with Bosch L-Jetronic fuel-injection. Its specification also included a five-speed manual gearbox, alloy wheels and front fog lamps to enhance the “synthesis of all the qualities you want, and need, in a car today”.

Autocar thought the GTi a “superb car, let down by rather poor ventilation”. However, many were prepared to overlook this defect with such a magnificent 117mph boulevard cruiser. The June 1980 edition of Motor Sport stated it was the car for those “who want the maximum of sophistication and science in their motoring”, unless the reader could afford a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow.

By that time the GTi indeed occupied a niche in the British car market. An affluent motorist might have looked at the Audi 100 Avant, the Renault 30TX, the Saab 900 GLS or Rover SD1 2600 but none possessed the Citroen’s almost defiant sense of individualism. Car magazine even suggested that “a lot of people simply can’t get on with the CX, and you have to convince yourself you aren’t one of them”. 

Citroen facelifted the CX in 1985 with plastic bumpers, while the XM replaced the range in 1989. Osborn’s is now one of only three first-generation 2400 GTis on the road. It was supplied by Jack Andrews Cars of Leeds for £7,026.06, including optional air-conditioning.

Osborn came by the CX in July 2016 as a ‘barn find’ and its refurbishment required “a new fuel tank, pump, pipes, exhaust, suspension [hydropneumatic] spheres, tyres, new locks (as the keys were missing) and the replacement of some missing bits of the dashboard”. The  GTi also needed a dent in a front wing removed, its air-conditioning restored plus a full service.

By the end of that year, the CX gained an MOT roadworthiness certificate (a test now 60 years old), and it looks as though it has emerged from a Citroen brochure of the future, science fiction made real. The facia is reminiscent of an alien spacecraft from the Seventies cult sci-fi series Blake’s Seven while the instrumentation includes  a disconcerting ‘cyclops eye’ speedometer and rev counter which revolve rather than having a conventional needle spinning through an arc. There is also a large, red warning lamp bearing the ominous word ‘STOP’ in the centre. 

Osborn also owns three other classic Citroens, and he finds that with his Ami Super, 2CV Camionette and D Super 5, “people will pull alongside, slow and have a look and often a wave before speeding on”. Yet, this is “not so with the CX, which is more anonymous. Or perhaps at the age of 40-plus it simply looks like what people now expect a car to look like and they don’t, therefore, think it anything out of the ordinary”.

And that is why this wonderful GTi is so extraordinary.

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