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RE: FREE STEEM Tell me an interesting fact and I'll give you some Steem

in #steemit7 years ago

I actually posted this on my Steemit account last week at https://steemit.com/cars/@auskiwi/citroen-c5-end-of-an-era

You get 2 little known facts about this car for the price of 1.
The first, mentioned in the post above, is that the innovative hydropneumatic suspension which debuted in the iconic 1955 Citroen DS, was discontinued in 2016 due to the beancounters not liking the cost of the system, and a lack of sales in recent years. End of an era.
The second little-known fact, is that cars with this type of suspension are banned in North America, for some unfathomable reason. There is even a plate under the hood of my Citroen C5 which states this. My theory, although I've never seen it verified anywhere else, is that the self-levelling aspect of the suspension enables hidden loads in the vehicle to be disguised when the vehicle is pulled over by law enforcement. They literally can't tell if you have a few hundred kgs of contraband hidden on the vehicle by looking at the sagging suspension, as with other vehicles. I got this information when I read somewhere that smugglers in Europe were using the old Citroen CX to run illegal bootlegged alcohol across the Pyrenees from Spain to France.
Ironically, that second fact may be the reason for the first fact. Perhaps the fact that Citroens are banned in the US made the vehicles uneconomic to produce in large numbers. After all, every other European car manufacturer from Mercedes to Volkswagen to Range Rover exports large numbers of cars to the US and Canada. It would have been natural for one of Europe's most popular luxury cars to be exported there too, but for that little legal quirk introduced no doubt by the alphabet soup agencies.

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