The Essential Buyers Guide Citroën DS and ID

The author of this book is well-known to the North American Citroën community having spent most of his life around the cars. His father, Hank Heilig owned a Citroën dealership in Vancouver, Canada in the 1970s and Rudy continued in his father’s footsteps setting up Citroën Concours of America in San Diego, CA, a company dedicated to supporting these cars in a marketplace that the marque abandoned over thirty years ago.

Reviewing a book like this is odd, not least because I have no practical experience of renovating a D series car. When I last owned one, they were still current. However, I do remember my father’s never-ending battle with the tin worm in a series of Ds; a subject that seems to get a mention on nearly every page of this useful little book.

There are a couple of minor criticisms and they all centre on the author’s geographic location. The book was obviously written in American English for a primarily American audience and has been ‘translated’ into the British variant in a somewhat haphazard way. “Aluminum” is correctly translated as “aluminium” and “trunk” and ‘hood” are “boot” and “bonnet” respectively but “rotors” are used instead of ‘disc brakes”, “kerb” retains its US “curb” spelling and the hydraulic gearbox is called “Citromatic”; a name which, to the best of my knowledge, was never used outside North America. But these are quibbles.

One correction that should be made relates to the position of the single spoke when the steering is in the straight ahead position – in left hand drive cars the spoke should be at the 7 o’clock position but in right hand drive vehicles it should be at the 5 o’clock position. This latter point is not mentioned.

Notwithstanding its small size (64 pages), this book deals with its subject matter comprehensively and clearly and will be an invaluable reference source for prospective buyers and restorers. It is illustrated with relevant photos although sadly, most of them seem to be of rust.

© 2008 Julian Marsh