Finally! The doctors identified the bacteria that ate up my graft and there’s an assassination plan in place. And, more importantly, I’ll be free today, free of this bed and these tubes and these wires and the indignities and discomfort of hospital life, ready to jump back into the indignities and discomforts of normal life once again. A shower. Oh do I want a shower! Let’s celebrate my upcoming freedom with some nice Citroën DS brochure images, selected mostly for that top image there, from a 1959 brochure and looking so strangely medical.
I think that heart-and-vascular system drawing is supposed to analogize the DS’ hydropneumatic suspension system, and, I suppose, the whole network of hydropneumatics in the car, which are a pressurized circulatory system, of sorts. I do love the illustration and the strange bio-creepiness of it, something I can’t see any modern carmaker doing today. Can you imagine a new RAV4 being shown with a heart and blood vessels?
They just showed me how I need to use the port they installed into my veins to upload antibiotics into myself every day. What a weird process! I feel so mechanical. I have to bleed air out of the syringes first before connecting them to my fluid lines – it’s like doing a brake job. But inside my body.
But back to this amazing DS brochure. Look at that image up above there; I’m not exactly sure what is going on? Is that the field where they grow women in leotards and airport semaphore-type signage? If so, I’ve always wondered about that.
Also, just gaze on that dashboard! It’s still one of the most incredible dashboards of any car. The one-spoke wheel, the integrated vents, the swoopy shapes, the strange positions of the levers and stalks – I love it.
This whole brochure is so gleefully unhinged. Like, is this picture taken inside one of the Great Pyramids?
I mean, it’s not, but it feels like it could be. Speaking of, have you ever seen a cutaway of the chambers in the Pyramids? They’re not very space-efficient:
I mean, that yellow DS looks fantastic there, or, I suspect, anywhere, really. They sort of prove this point on another page of the brochure:
Sure, just park it in front of a, what is that, cement factory? Or a gravel-making something? there’s what looks like a hopper and some sort of conveyer system, but whatever it is, they’re not wrong, the DS still looks good.
I always appreciate a good trunk-packing photo, especially when they cram some kids in there. It’s odd they didn’t cram those last two bags in there, though? Unless the implication is that’s where the kids are now?
I love cutaway drawings, and one of the conceits of these I love is the jagged hole, as seen in the roof there. They could have illustrated it with smooth edges, but I suppose to avoid any confusion that the roof may actually have the opening, they use that wonderful zig-zag like sawed-open look. It’d be fun to get a real DS and inset a plastic roof panel with those same type of edges in there.
More nurses are coming explaining things for when I leave! Freedom! I’ll be free from this bed, these smells, the needles and cuffs and wires! I can’t wait!
I really expected this to start with you talking about doodling a circulatory system in a Citroen, not that it was a factory brochure!
Glad you’re on the road to recovery (again)!
Congratulations! Speedy recovery, and enjoy the shower –
The image reminds me of the special effect from quartermaster and the pit…
https://images.app.goo.gl/nC51UySY2CsxEPqdA
Very, very happy for you. Best wishes.
I loved my ’74 DS, but really wished it still had the original dash design.
The closest we got to that level of wonderful wackiness was the ’62 – ’63 full-size Plymouth: https://www.volocars.com/vehicles/15732/1962-plymouth-fury-max-wedge
I spent 3 days in a hospital for what was thought to be a stroke, but later was determined to be a case of vertigo, which I never experienced before. The best part of getting out of the hospital was a very long, hot shower and fresh, strong coffee.
I agree 100% about the joys of cutaway drawings, and that’s what made Richard Scarry books so much fun when I was a kid. I was unbelievably happy when my kids loved his stuff too when they were little and I could go over his books with them at bedtime.
The minute you open a book of his like Cars And Trucks And Things That Go you knew he was a guy who loved cars. (I fat fingered this at first and wrote “lived cars” but that may not be wrong.)
Have a quick recovery.
For the Airport Signage…
It’s well known in France that the DS has an option to become airborne like a plane : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLBnWoKTjho
For the Pyramid :
It’s probably one of the many quarry we have around and inside Paris.
( though it’s not taken in one of the quarry inside Paris… the ones that had that kind of volumes were underr the Butte Montmartre and the Butte Chaumont and have been backfilled when the areas were developped )
That’s hilarious! I have that exact same brochure with the blonde French model on the cover (picked up at the Simeone Foundation in Philly) and kept intending to send it to you. “Leaving far behind the vanity of nickel plate and the vulgarity of gratuitous ornament…” even the language is fantastic.
Yay! Finally…glad you’re getting the hell out of there! I can’t even go a day w/o a shower so I can’t even imagine all this. At 1st I thought you had drawn the top pic w/ the veins since it was so good and just fit the situation, so was surprised that it was an actual ad pic.
Those girls really love their poles! What a great pic (that dash is great too…the DS is amazing)
That was hilarious about the luggage
Also, that jagged roof cutout would look right at home on the
cYbErJuNkTrUcK
Congrats! I hope they don’t leave you waiting until the late afternoon, as typically happens when my mother is discharged from a hospital.
The jagged edges on the roof cut are a convention in engineering drawings for the edge a partial cutaway. It is odd seeing it in a consumer illustration.
But what’s super odd, in the most fantastic way, is how there are properly projected shadows of the jagged edges onto the seats! As if it is not just an illustration conceit, but an actual torn apart roof!
It’s actually the new roof on the cYbErJuNkTrUcK!