COBI Citroen DS 19 1956 Set 24347

COBI's Citroën DS 19 is a 1:12 model built from 2,230 blocks under original licence from Citroën, 40 cm long. Doors and boot open, the steering turns the front wheels, and a brick-built engine sits under the bonnet. New brick shapes were designed for this set, including the windscreen, and the parts come in numbered bags.

The 1955 Paris Salon

The DS was unveiled on the morning of 6 October 1955. Citroën took 743 orders in the first forty-five minutes and around twelve thousand by the end of the day, from people who had seen a car with no visible grille, no conventional springs, a single-spoke steering wheel and a brake operated by a rubber button on the floor.

The French philosopher Roland Barthes wrote about it shortly afterwards, and his description is the one that stuck: a machine that had clearly descended from the sky, handled by the crowd at the show the way a congregation handles a relic.

Underneath it was as radical as it looked. Hydropneumatic suspension — nitrogen spheres and fluid instead of steel springs — levelled the car whatever the load and let the driver change the ride height. The same high-pressure circuit worked the brakes, the steering and the clutch. It was also the first mass-produced car with disc brakes on the front.

In the COBI range

This is the standard-edition DS 19 in 1:12. Set 24350 is the same car as the Executive Edition in President de Gaulle's black and white. COBI also makes the DS 21 Pallas (24348) and the Chapron convertible (24346).

Specifications

Pieces: 2,230 · Scale: 1:12 · Licensed by Citroën
Model dimensions: 40 × 15 × 12.5 cm (15.8 × 5.9 × 4.9 in)