Citroen was in a bad financial situation at the beginning of the ’70s, and despite having successful products, its accounting was in the red zone.
With only a few models in its lineup and significant debts, Citroen went bankrupt in 1974. Michelin, the tire manufacturer, owned one-third of the carmaker’s stakes and sold them to Peugeot, who stepped in to save the struggling brand. But other parts of the business made them go bankrupt, not the car business. The new model, which received the CX name, was the living proof for that.

It was long, sleek, and very aerodynamic for a sedan. While other cars from those times looked like boxes on wheels, the CX looked like a spacecraft. Its raked and curved windshield featured one wiper. The designer Robert Opron studied the vehicle’s shape in the wind tunnel, while most other coachbuilders just tried to stick an engine, a cabin, and a trunk between the front and rear bumpers. Even the door handles were modern, not to mention the rectangular headlights with a narrower inner side.

Inside, the revolutionary design continued with a one-spoke steering wheel. Citroen engineers considered that the driver had to decide when to start and stop the turn signals and mounted their switch on the left side of the instrument cluster, not on a stalk from the steering column. Another improvement was for the instrument cluster, where Citroen wrote the values on a cylinder and placed a lens in front of it.

CX had one weak spot: the engine. Due to the French tax rules, it was forced to install low-powered and small displacement engines. Not even the most powerful version, which provided 128 hp, was able to crack the 120 mph (193 kph) barrier. But the car provided the most comfortable ride on the market thanks to its unique hydropneumatic self-leveling suspension system.