Simon Manley

A trip down memory lane

I went to a place called The Bomb Shelter in Akron today and it stirred up some great memories.

There was a Citroën DS outside which piqued my interest straight away, a Citroën in the USA is a rare sight but an immaculate DS in North eastern Ohio is rare indeed.

Inside the main door there’s a 1990 Yugo which although rare not surprising — there’s a great story behind Yugo in America that’s well worth a read or watch — but entering the back area there is a fantastic line up of rare euro cars including a Citroën 2CV Charleston, a Citroën Ami, a DeLorean DMC-12 — best known as the Back to the future car — and a Citroën CX Pallas series 1. All in absolutely mint condition.

It reminded me of my own long-forgotten ownership of a CX in the late 90’s. It was a great story of how I came to get it and what eventually happened to it. It sat in a yard for quite a while and I really had to convince the guy to sell it to me. As far as I remember it was the product of a long running insurance claim.

The story goes…

A captain from a ship that sailed from Rosslare to Fishguard owned this car, the parking brake was notorious on these cars and when it was worn it had what we called the rocket launcher handbrake because when it was worn it would pull up almost vertical before it would engage.

Anyway when the captain came back after his shift he found his car had rolled down the carpark and hit a wall, being blamed on that notorious handbrake, breaking the front bumper cover beyond repair and badly damaging the bonnet and radiator panel as well as the radiator.

I eventually bought it as a damaged repairable. I could not find a bumper anywhere, I fixed the bonnet and panel and had it painted and I replaced the radiator.

It took almost a year to get a genuine bumper cover from France at a horrific price of almost £600 (Irish punts in ’93 or ’94). When I finally got it altogether my Dad — who wasn’t into cars at all — fell in love with the car, not surprising, the smell of the leather interior alone would sell this car.

Anyway when he retired in ’98 or so he didn’t want to pay the large road tax anymore so I bought it back off him.

I kept it for a couple of years and only sold it when my son was a baby — for money frankly, he was quite sick for the first 18 months or so of his life.

I sold it to an enthusiast who slowly and surprisingly, ruined it until all it was fit for was the scrapyard. I was quite annoyed as I really didn’t want to sell it to him but he literally begged me. At the time I had two running Citroen 16v Gti BX’s I was willing to sell one of them instead so I had an out.

One of my 16v’s was the one I rushed my wife at the time to hospital because of complications with my sons birth so I was never going to sell that. Unfortunately that car was written off when someone crashed into it when it was parked, a drunk driver with no insurance.

Anyway, my rambling comes from memories of seeing Citroën’s today.

Citroën, Alfa Romeo, VW, Audi and Mercedes have always been a big part of my life and have plotted my journey of where I was in my career at points in time.

If you want to see some really nice French classics in pristine condition it’s well worth a visit. There was a slide in camper and some motorcycles there too but I didn’t get to investigate them. Yet.