Every young man across the world understands the First Rule of Teenage Courtship: driving like an idiot will guarantee that she falls in love with you. Right? Right?! (Wrong.) But don't let the amorous geniuses of the Citroën Marketing Division try to teach you otherwise.
If you want to explain France to aliens, a good place to start would be with love and the Citroën 2CV. Originally designed in the 1930s to finally take all those French farmers out of their horse-drawn carts and put them into cars, the 2CV (pronounced deux chevaux for "two horses," even though the first ones had the power of nine horses, but whatever) went into production in 1948. The suspension was designed to be able to carry a crate of eggs without breaking them over a ploughed field. Or, as this ad from 1980 shows, to hoon the crap out of the car over a French beach.
Here we have our unnamed hero, skillfully tearing about, sand flying everywhere, bodies in the car flying everywhere, while his lady friend tries to cozy up to him out of fear or love or both. His face is filled with desire. Seriously. This is his face, and that face can only say desire, I think:
That's the face of teenage male desire if I've ever seen it in a clip from the 1980's.
Foot down on the pedal, shifting madly, our hero is completely oblivious to the desires of the lady beside him, who desperately plays with his hair. Still, he continues, so she drops a subtle hint by completely switching off the ignition. She pulls off his bowtie, and he stares it her with burning passion:
That's the face of teenage male burning passion if I've ever seen it in a clip from the 1980's.
It all gets so hot and heavy that they can do nothing but stand up randomly, thus putting an end to the fireworks. But not to our hero's young love, as he spells out in the sand how he truly feels.
"FREE."
Oh, and there he goes, continuing to spell out more words. What's that he's writing? "Amour libre?" What's that mean in English? I'm sure it's something very romantic and endearing, expressing his undying and platonic affections for his one true love.
"FREE LOVE."
Crap.
Buy a Citroën, become a swinger. Why didn't they just use that tagline?
The Citroën 2CV Is All About Freaky-Deaky Freedom