COBI Citroen Traction 11CVBL Set 2266

COBI's Citroën Traction 11CV BL is a 1:35 model built from 236 blocks, under Citroën licence, with spinning wheels and an opening door. The car carries the emblems of the Forces françaises de l'Intérieur, and a figure of a French Resistance fighter and a nameplate are included. All markings are printed; no stickers.

What FFI on a car door meant

The Forces françaises de l'Intérieur were created in February 1944 to bring the French Resistance under a single command — until then it had been a collection of separate networks, some communist, some Gaullist, some neither, occasionally hostile to each other.

The letters painted on a vehicle were the practical consequence of that unification, and they served the same purpose as an armband. A group of armed men in civilian clothes in a requisitioned car is indistinguishable from a criminal gang; the same men in a car marked FFI are a military formation. It was a claim to legitimacy made in white paint, usually applied the week the Germans left.

After the Liberation those markings mattered in a second way. Vehicles were being seized on all sides, and an FFI marking was the difference between a requisition and a theft — which is why they appear in so many photographs from the summer of 1944 and almost none from before it.

The car

The Traction Avant in production from 1934 to 1957, with a unitary body and front-wheel drive. BL denotes the narrow-bodied short-wheelbase version — the most common of all the Tractions.

In the COBI range

The other 1:35 Tractions are 2263, 2264, 2265 and 2267. Set 2055 includes a Resistance figure, and 24336 is the 1:12 Traction Avant.

Specifications

Pieces: 236 · Figures: 1 Resistance fighter · Scale: 1:35 · Licensed by Citroën · No stickers