Today marks the 140th anniversary of the birth of Pierre Jules Boulanger. This man, often simply called PJB by his collaborators, is the spiritual father of the Citroën 2CV.
He was born on 10 March 1885 in northern France. During his military service, he became friends with Marcel Michelin, scion of the family of the famous tyre company. In 1908, he left for the United States, where he worked on a ranch, as a tram driver and later as an architect. When World War I broke out, Boulanger returned to France to defend his country.
After the war, Boulanger got a job at Michelin, where he quickly made a career: from 1922 he was on the board of directors. When Citroën went bankrupt in 1934, Michelin, as main creditor, took over. Pierre Boulanger was sent to Paris with Pierre Michelin to run the car factory. Pierre Michelin as CEO, Pierre Boulanger as director.
Under Pierre Michelin's leadership, the Traction Avant's teething problems were quickly remedied, while Pierre Boulanger became responsible for the development of new cars, among other things. In doing so, he personally interfered in the smallest details. He was not often in his office: he preferred to go to the design department or the test track, always dressed in his sober grey overcoat and with an eternal cigarette in his mouth. He wrote down all the details in his little black notebook and tested the prototypes himself... Nothing happened without his approval.
In late 1935, Pierre Boulanger was stuck in a traffic jam when he realised he was the only one with a car there. The French countryside was still barely motorised. Not surprisingly, as cars were far too expensive and also hardly suited to conditions outside the city. Couldn't a small, affordable country car fill a huge gap in the market? Thus was born the idea for the car that entered the market as Citroën 2CV in 1948.
Both Pierre Michelin and Pierre Boulanger would not live to see the 2CV's success. On 30 December 1937, Pierre Michelin died as a result of a car accident the day before. From then on, Pierre Boulanger would lead Citroën on his own. A sombre parallel is that he would also die in a car crash, 13 years later, when his car skidded on an icy road and ended up against a tree on 12 November 1950.
