By John Reynolds

This special edition of Eighty Years of Citroën in the United Kingdom is bound in dark blue leather by the well-known firm of Sangorski and Sutcliffe and fits inside a custom made box.

Now that Citroën cars are selling at the rate of over 100,000 vehicles per year in the United Kingdom and that there are presently more than a million examples currently registered as running on the British roads, Automobiles Citroëns has become, once again, a major mainstream marque in England.

Yet few of these recent converts to Citroën ownership may be aware that this current situation echoes the success enjoyed by the marque in the 1920s when the Double Chevron marque was easily the most popular among imported Continental cars. So much so, in fact, that in 1926 its founder, Andre Citroën, established a factory at Slough to build his cars in right-hand-drive form for the British and Commonwealth market. Thus the company is actually one of the oldest names in the British motor industry, an institution older than the BBC and the second longest-established of all foreign and imported makes with a history in Great Britain that can be traced back to 1923 and beyond.

In tracing the story of Citroën in the United Kingdom between 1920 and 1980, Eighty Years of Citroën in the United Kingdom reviews the history of Citroën Cars Ltd. - which is the predecessor of the present trading company Citroën UK Ltd.- and recalls the right-hand-drive vehicles built at the Slough Works between 1926 and 1966, and all those models subsequently imported from France between 1966 and 1980. Pre-war, Post-war and even wartime production is fully catalogued and illustrated by over 250 archive press and publicity pictures together with contemporary advertising material, and also by a new series of specially commissioned full-colour photos showing some of the very best surviving historic cars. The complete span of right-hand-drive vehicles featured includes the conventional rear-wheel-drive cars of the Andre Citroën era 1919-1934, the Traction Avant of 1955-1975 as well as the Citroën-Maserati SM of 1970-1975 and the later GS/GSA, CX and BX models.

John Reynolds is a life-long Citroën enthusiast who, as a professional motoring author and journalist, has made a special study of the Double Chevron marque.

He has contributed to numerous British, French, Dutch and Japanese motoring journals including Autocar, Classic Cars, Classic & Sports Car, Automobilia, Retroviseur, 2CV Magazine, Citroexpert, Super Car Graphic and the Daily Telegraph Saturday Review.

He has also published several other books on Citroën topics including a biography of Andre Citroën, an account of the life story of  the Citroën 2CV and a study of the genesis and technical evolution of the Citroën DS and ID models.

Hard back bound in leather and custom box

Page count: 270 pages

Page size: 330 mm x 240 mm

Illustrations: 400+ black and white and color photographs