the history of The automobile written by engineers, but on all intrepid adventurers, as André Citroën were proposed feats achieved by that was the founder of Citroën, cross the Sahara desert in a vehicle in 1922. As you can imagine, that adventure is not only put to test the technical ability of André Citroën and his own to create a machine able to cope with the complexity of a field as demanding as a desert, but that would also entail large risks for the participants in that expedition. What and how do you plan to revive Citroën this myth, the Scarabée d’or, who crossed the Sahara in 1922?
Crossing the Sahara in a vehicle makes it virtually a century was a major technical challenge, and even more human, so complicated that task in a time when technological resources were very limited.
The Scarabée d’or, or Golden Beetle in Spanish, is the name given to a preparation of a Citroën B2 model K1 with strings, which was as spectacular as can be seen in these images. That was the vehicle with which André Citroën, Georges-Marie Haardt and Louis Audouin-Dubreuil is proposed to cross the Sahara at the end of 1922.
The first expedition would begin on the 17th of December, 1922, with a caravan of three vehicles, that would go nothing more and nothing less than 3.200 kilometres in the conditions that are more complicated that he never would have faced a car until the time and in a journey of 21 days. To 3,200 kilometers without signaling, and obviously, without the help of tracking systems, and guidance of modern.
To relive this history Citroën has proposed a beautiful adventure. The Museum Citroën still retains one of the Scarabée d’or-original, as returned from the Sahara after his adventure, with his chains, and his open body that still leads us to wonder more incredible to have achieved this feat becomes practically a century.
Citroën, together with the Higher School of Arts and Trades (ENSAM) and of the Lyceum of Trades Auto and Transportation Chateau d Epluches, in France, it has been proposed to form two working teams. The first team will be responsible for retrieving all technical information as possible, to make the drawings of the vehicle and build a model at 1:1 scale of the original. The second team will get something even more interesting, use all the information to create a new Scarabée d’or exactly as the original, including its body and engine.
A project that will begin next September 1, and that attempts to recreate the adventure so exciting.
Source: Citroën