Henry de Ségur Lauve & Citroën

One day in 1960, the French consulate in Detroit held a cocktail party. Designer Henry De Ségur Lauve was invited as an interpreter because of his knowledge of French. At the party, he met Pierre Bercot, the director of Citroën. They got talking about Citroën design, and Bercot invited De Ségur Lauve to meet again in Paris. The conversation went well, and in May 1960 De Ségur Lauve signed a collaboration agreement with Citroën to create designs that would appeal to American consumers.

From then on, De Ségur Lauve presented a substantial number of sketches for new models each year, with an unmistakable American influence. The first designs sometimes still resemble facelifted DS models, but soon they sometimes look more like spacecraft than cars for everyday use. De Ségur Lauve had access to Citroën’s design studio and could see what designs the designers were working on, allowing him to create “Americanized” versions based on those models. Examples can be found in this book among the proposals for the Citroën CX and the interior of the Citroën SM.

Many of De Ségur Lauve’s spectacular designs ended up in the Citroën archives and were forgotten. After more than 50 years, this work is being presented prominently for the first time in this book. A unique piece of Citroën history!

The texts in the book are in Dutch, French, and English.