This is the barn in the back of my house, in the DC area. There is an extension in the back of the barn with... 3 more DSs inside! Two station wagons and one sedan. I will most likely put one of the SW back on the road, the other one being used for parts. The sedan will be my rotary cvt project. The idea being to finish the job of the Citroen engineers and fit a crazy engine mated to a crazy transmission into the crazy car that the DS is.
The five DSs in the picture are in working order, which took quite some work already. The one in the middle is the one of my grand father which I got in my twenties and which started my love story with the Goddess. I am currently working at adapting two CX GTI Turbo 2 engines and I will fit them in two of the cars in the picture, I don't know which ones yet. Not the one of my grand father which is a '67 model and which I am keeping original.
How did all this start? I was missing my two DSs that I had left back in France when I moved to the US. So I bought one here which needed some work (the one that will end up with the rotary and the CVT). Having difficulties finding parts, I bought a lot of 2 DSs for the parts. But one of them was too good to be parted and is a '67 model, the most sought after, so I restored it (the second from the right on the picture). I parted the second one and got rid of the shell which was badly rusted. At some point I visited a Citroen enthusiast in Baltimore as I was looking for a transmission. He sold me one and he threw 3 station wagons full of parts in the deal! I parted out one of them which was too badly rusted and also got rid of the shell. And I ended up with a BIG stock of parts which is a good thing, as they are not as easy to get as the MB ones on the US market.
Then the gentleman called me back a while after, and told me he was ready to part with his beloved '68 DS 21, due to age. He wanted it to go to someone who will be able to keep it on the road. So I couldn't refuse. This is the one on the far right on the picture. I retrofitted it with a 67 front clip which I like better, all the rest on a '68 being the same as on the '67 model, including the dashboard. This car is a Pallas model, and will end up "Palladium" gray.
A little after, while I was looking for an interior, I noted that the seller had a black DS under his porch. It had been sitting there for a number of years. I didn't take the interior, but I came back home with the DS (the one on the far left in the picture). Black DSs where government cars in the France of my childhood. This is why I saved it. It threw me back in the happy days of when I was a kid.
Finally, my friend who was keeping my two DSs in France told me he needed the space. So I got them on a boat to the US (the two with the French tags on them in the picture). Thinking of it, this is what I should have done in the first place. It may have kept me from getting all the other ones in the meantime!
I may end up selling a few at some point, but not for now. My problem is that I'm getting attached to the cars I work on. And I am prone to snow bowling stories. Is all of this reasonable? Surely not. But the world we live in now doesn't seem to be very reasonable either. So the hell with it!
