During their career, the gendarmes sometimes come across strange specimens. A patrol in the Indre thus came across an improbable Citroën Xantia transformed into a convertible in a very traditional way, with Audi and BMW logos as a bonus!
Secma Roadster or PGO aside, French convertibles today belong to an extinct species. But a motorist seems to have struggled to recover from this disappearance. He obviously grabbed a circular saw to savagely cut the roof and tailgate of his Citroën Xantia, in order to transform it into a convertible unique in the world. As if that weren’t enough to attract attention, he replaced the Chevrons with Audi’s rings in the grille, and BMW’s propeller on the trunk.
TO HAVE. French convertibles, an extinct species
A “concept car” withdrawn from circulation
Unfortunately for him, the motorized platoon of Châteauroux realized that this vehicle did not come directly from a concession, and proceeded to arrest him.
““This” concept car made in France “has been immobilized and will be withdrawn from circulation in accordance with the directives of the judicial authority”, indicates the Gendarmerie de l’Indre on its Facebook page.“ A decision that will inevitably seem harsh to some of you. But the transformation of a model into a convertible is not an operation to be taken lightly. To compensate for the inevitable loss of rigidity caused by the removal of the hard roof, the builders sometimes add more than a hundred kilos of reinforcements. Roll bars, often retractable today, are also present to protect passengers in the event of a rollover.
TO READ. What second-hand convertible for less than € 10,000?
No new Citroën convertible on the horizon
Very artisanal, the “Citroën-Audi-BMW Xantia” had obviously not given so much attention to all these aspects. Especially since it still kept its four doors, which does not really bode well for the rigidity … unless they were welded. In the absence of an approval which seems totally impossible to obtain, this funny convertible has little chance of being able to hit the road again one day. Unfortunately, it is not in the current and future Citroën range that our motorist-handyman will be able to console himself. After the flop of the e-Mehari electric on the basis of Bolloré BlueSummer, the brand does not seem in a hurry to offer a new discoverable model. But perhaps our man will be tempted to follow up on the 2007 Airscape concept, this time by cutting out a second-generation C5, which had been preceded by this pretty study of a four-seater convertible.
