Back in March, I wrote about the weirdest bus ever made, the Citroën U55 Cityrama Currus, a machine with bizarre styling that perfectly matches its absurdity. I wrote in that headline that the bus “Seems To Have Been Lost To Time,” but it turns out: The last surviving example has been found. And guess what? It actually drives!
The update to the story on these wonderful buses comes from the person who told the story about them in the first place. YouTuber The Tim Traveller introduced the world to these buses back in March. For a little background, Tim treks the world documenting obscure places in rich detail. The videos usually feature what the subject looks like today, but the Citroën Cityrama bus piece was different; the newest photo of a surviving bus dated back to 2008.
In an example of how awesome the internet can be, Tim’s viewers pointed out that one example is actually still around. And soon, he found himself cycling out to a “Vintage Vehicle Meeting” in rural Normandy, France.
Back in the 1950s, Paris tour company Groupe Cityrama commissioned a fleet of wild buses. There’s little information out there about these buses, but the story is believed to go like this: Groupe Cityrama launched in 1956 as a tourism company in Paris, France. Paris tourism is highly competitive, so the company decided to go far out to get attention.
Cityrama’s plan to be different was to have a fleet of distinctive sightseeing buses.
Under the massive glass greenhouses of these buses sat a Citroën Type 55 utility truck chassis. These workhorses featured either 4.6-liter gasoline sixes making 73 HP or 5.2-liter diesel sixes producing 86 HP. The Type 55 launched in 1953 and was produced all of the way to 1965. These trucks acted as platforms for fire engines, flatbeds and…five to ten strange sightseeing buses.
To bus-ify the Type 55, Cityrama took the truck chassis to Currus, a French coachbuilder. There, Currus built the incredible body that you see here on top of the humble Citroën trucks. As Tim originally noted, Currus had the challenge of making a double-decker bus that was both mostly glass and looked like nothing else.
And, every angle of the bus has something new to see from the huge red wing that looks like a carrying handle, to the fins out back that look like they could fit on a Cadillac.
And the front end is equally as odd. The lower portion looks like a boat hull was grafted on, and bisecting the lower and upper decks is a spear.
Inside the bus, tourists got to wear headsets that broadcast commentary on the scenery in a variety of different languages. The passengers on the upper deck got to enjoy an open-air experience on good days as a large section of the glass roof could be removed.
If you’ve been on a modern sightseeing bus none of this will sound amazing. But remember, this was late 1950s technology at work, here!
The quirky Citroën U55 Cityrama Currus buses were a hit. They became so popular, even, that they ended up in French films. But their longevity on the road would be challenged by potential design flaws. As noted a number of times by Tim and other sources, the buses had a knack for overheating, leading to the addition of second and third grilles, then eventually, an oil cooler. As you’ve probably noticed, few pieces of media about these buses seem to exist, so French movie Zazie dans le Métro is the best way to see what they looked like.
The buses were reportedly retired from service in 1980. Most of the five to ten buses then disappeared. One was known to run in a circus before disappearing, then there is this one, which is considered to be the only survivor.
And it is only just surviving. Most of the windows are gone, the body panels are falling off, the paint is a mess, and you have to be careful walking around the interior. But amazingly, the bus actually made it to the vintage car meet under its own power. Like a Vice Grip Garage rescue, it’s rough, but still working! It’s always awesome to see a piece of history still in operation despite the odds.
The interior still has hints of its past, too, as the multi-language commentary system is physically intact. You can also still see Cityrama displayed on the buses’ flanks.
The news gets even better. The Citroën has changed hands to the Association Normande d’Anciens Utilitaires (ANU). It’s a long-running classic vehicle club. But instead of cars, these folks deal in classic commercial vehicles. The president of the club sounds like a true gearhead, remarking that behind an old truck’s odometer are decades of stories and a soul.
ANU’s plans for the last surviving Cityrama bus are to restore it to its former glory.
Normandy Classics is handling the restoration and it sounds like the shop is going all of the way. The bus will be completely disassembled and overhauled from the ground-up. The work is expected to take at least four years.
ANU has set up a donation page, asking for some help in seeing this restoration become reality. If you’re an international bus nut and want to donate, the link is here.
Otherwise, I will be eagerly waiting for the progress and completion of the restoration. Hopefully, in four years it’ll come out of Normandy Classics looking brand new. And with luck, maybe yours truly will go to France to see the beauty in person.
Is Carscoops reading theautopian for article ideas?
https://www.carscoops.com/2022/07/the-last-surviving-citroen-cityrama-tour-bus-is-getting-the-restoration-it-richly-deserves/
Also like the Volvo cabover hauling that beautiful monstrosity! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Derek is definitely a Feller that would try to drive that home as is.
Donated 10 Euro even though I don’t speak a word of French. Quite the experience, especially figuring out what USA is called in French. If it turns out badly, I’ll let you know.
It’s Etats Unis d’Amérique ( literally United States of America )
Note that the donation page is not direct to the company that will perform the restauration for to a French State sanctioned organization that centralize and organize that kind of donations for historical monuments and important stuff (1) ( because I can’t explain how broad that definition in a few words ). It’s a bit like the English Heritage but it has a broader domain ( and is usually less known and less funded ).
(1) historical monuments in France is an extremely wide definition it goes from the Eiffel Tower to the Ammonite wall in Southern France… and in between you get mineralogical crystals, buses, train wagons, cars, paintings and more. the classification is mostly known for the buildings, but it’s really broad. I didn’t check but there’s good chances that yesterday’s Tour de France stage took place on top of stretches of historical monuments ( stone paved roads in Northern France some of them have the classification ), that’s to give you how broad the *monuments historique* ( historical monument ) classification is.
And Britain is down as Royaume Uni (United Kingdom), not ‘Angleterre’ or ‘putain de connards’ as I was expecting.
Holy crap that is cool!!!
Mercedes, you continue to speak to my heart with your articles. Present company at Autopian notwithstanding, I find fewer and fewer folks who understand the “soul” of a vehicle. “It’s just a way to get around” they say after spending $45,000 to $70,000 on a vehicle. Those of us who enjoy/love/take care of our vehicles because they represent more than just transportation are a dying breed.
Never change, Mercedes.
It’s more complex… The Tim video Mercedes linked is the second video on that topic and a follow up of him trying to track down if there’s still one existing ( obviously there is one ), you need to watch the first one to understand the history of that monster bus.
original design? maybe for a vehicle, because it looks like it’s inspired by the bateau mouche, just made for the street not Seine.
If I were filthy rich and owned theme parks this is what the transportation would look like.
A weird bus story from who else? Mercedes Streeter, and a weird bus from where else? France.
plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose
Man, I fucking love weird old buses.
Beautiful machine, but don’t they have masking tape in France?
I am wicked dense today.
This is what I’d expect a Vista Cruiser to look like after a lifetime of steroid abuse.
Anybody else kinda expect to see Thunderbird 2 on its way to help in the Eiffel Tower shot?
The Tim Traveller, anyone?
Right. She linked his videos in the second paragraph.
saw it this weekend at Le Mans Classic, looked like it came out of The Jetsons, the seats looked spectacular, had a distinct Starship Enterprise to them
That makes you one of the only people in the present day to have seen the bus in person! It’s awesome to hear that it’s about as spectacular in person as it does through a computer screen.
It looks like the Ajax from Flash Gordon.
We need to find another one of these and do a RV conversion!
Could fit a basketball goal in it
One of my lottery dreams is total revamp of cool old Metro bus to super cool RV. Like that RV movie with the late great Robon Williams, but driven by I think Owen Williams?
However I seem to remember this vehicle on another political auto website last year.
Sorry Mercedes but I think it was way before you got there.
Good luck, Tim is usually very thorough, and it took him months to track that single one.
( he managed to track down the *aérotrain prototypes* which is a feat even for a French )
As a general rule in Europe ( and especially France ) we don’t tend to keep old vehicles once they become useless. There’s the occasional barn find, but that’s pretty uncommon.
Seems like pretty low HP numbers for something with so much mass.
Those seem like extremely low HP numbers but not atypical for commercial trucks in Europe around that time. These in particular were expected to spend most of their service between 5 and 20 MPH, and never anticipated to go much over that for long.
Maybe that’s why they were so prone to overheating. Slow speeds in a warm city environment aren’t good for an engine being worked near its limits unless you add a lot of cooling.
The diesel and gas engines were both right around 200ft/lbs, which is plenty of torque to move something that size at a leisurely pace.
Said brochure also shows them in use as a 6 slot car transporter. Would not have cared to follow that on the highway.
There’s also a fantastic version for a french appliance/aeronautics company that looks like an RV/rocket hybrid, so this isn’t the only outlandish coachwork.
They only needed to stroll through Paris at 10 to 20km/h… to give ample time for everybody to have a good look at *Historical Paris*
Something as uniquely French as this makes me think “ahh, the French!”
https://youtu.be/VFevH5vP32s
Lots of windows and 50’s era air-conditioning. I wonder how that smelled on a sunny day…
I long for an edit button. I see the windows opened.
we all long for edit
I’m guessing a cross between B.O. and a pot roast
.
European
Like cigarettes
Cigarettes And Resignation
Beef Bourguignon, most likely
Funky Town – Pseudo Echo variant
What so many people do not know about the culinary expertise of the French is all those wonderful sauces and spices were to disguise rotted meat pre-refridgeration.
50s era air conditioning used R12, so it should get very cold
Not with that amazing greenhouse, especially before modern science.
That would be ’50s era General Motors air conditioning, which would practically spit ice out the vents, not sure the rest of the world had caught up to them at that point.
In Paris?
The short answer is sweat and cologne.
Cigarettes and perfume trying valiantly to tamp down the stench of dozens of unwashed crotches and twice that many armpits. Ahhh, France!
I wonder what an RV conversion you could do with a London Doubledecker?
There’s plenty out there, they get converted into all sorts of things including restaurants (ie a massive food truck, with seating on the top deck), mobile classrooms and internet cafes, bars. I’ve seen broken ones used as farm buildings.