Citroën Type A

Citroën Type A

Citroën

MarqueCitroën
Production1919–1921 / 24,093 made
EnginePetrol: 1.3 L Straight-4

Among the 261 Citroën entries in the MotorJury library, the Citroën Type A holds its own page in a catalogue built to record every car ever made, from series production to one-off concepts. The record places its introduction in 1919. The photography on this page is hotlinked from Wikimedia Commons under an open licence, with the photographer credited on every frame.

The era it was born into

To read the Citroën Type A properly it helps to place it in its decade. The 1910s were the decade the automobile became an industry — Ford's moving assembly line cut the price of motoring by an order of magnitude and forced every rival to industrialise or vanish. Any car launched into that world was shaped by it — by what materials, engineering and regulation allowed, and by what buyers of the day demanded. Its direct contemporaries in this catalogue, introduced within three years of it, include the Fiat Fiat 501, the Isotta Fraschini Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8, the Austin Austin Twenty — the cars a buyer of the period would actually have cross-shopped.

The numbers, read closely

On paper, the Citroën Type A reads like this: the record lists its engine as Petrol: 1.3 L Straight-4; kerb weight is recorded at 810 kg (long) / 680 kg (short); drive goes through 3-speed manual; the layout is FR layout. Every figure above is a manufacturer specification carried by the Wikipedia infobox or the open Wikidata record for this model — nothing on this page is estimated, and where a source is silent the row simply does not appear.

Its place in the Citroën story

Within Citroën's own catalogue the Citroën Type A sits alongside the Citroën 2CV, the Citroën Activa, the Citroën Ami, the Citroën Ami 6. The record names the none as its predecessor and the Citroën Type B2 as its successor, fixing its place in the model line's chronology. Assembly is recorded at Parc André Citroën, Quai de Javel, Vaugirard, Paris, France.

How this catalogue works

This library is generated, verified and rebuilt from the open record on every deploy. The catalogue skeleton comes from Wikidata, specifications from Wikipedia's infoboxes under CC BY-SA, photography from Wikimedia Commons under each file's own licence, and the ownership data from United States federal safety records. Nothing is written by hand and nothing is invented: every fact on this page traces to a public source, and every page is rebuilt nightly as those sources improve. Errors in the source record will appear here too — and disappear the night the source is corrected.

Why concepts and prototypes are in the library

Most car databases stop at series production. This one deliberately does not, because concept cars, racing specials and cancelled prototypes are where the industry thinks out loud — the ideas tested in public years before they reach a showroom. Holding them beside the production cars they inspired makes the lineage legible: nearly every landmark road car in this library has a concept ancestor somewhere in the catalogue, and the connections run through the era links on every page.

From catalogue to ownership

A specification sheet is only half a car's story. The other half — what breaks, what it costs to keep, which years to avoid — lives in MotorJury's ownership database, computed nightly from federal complaint and recall records and EPA economy data. Where the Citroën Type A was sold in the United States, its model years carry full ownership verdicts there.

Specifications

Transmission3-speed manual
LayoutFR layout
Body style"Torpedo" / "Torpedo Sport" / "Conduite Intérieure" (saloon/sedan) / "Coupe de Ville"
Kerb weight810 kg (long) / 680 kg (short)
Wheelbase2.83 m (long) / 2.55 m (short)
Length4,000 mm
AssemblyParc André Citroën, Quai de Javel, Vaugirard, Paris, France
Predecessornone
SuccessorCitroën Type B2
Catalogue IDQ920837

Specifications come from the Wikipedia infobox for this model (CC BY-SA) and the open Wikidata record, and are shown only where a source actually carries them — nothing here is estimated. Figures are manufacturer specifications, not measured results.

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What it costs to run

Ownership verdicts are computed from NHTSA complaint and recall records plus EPA economy data, re-priced for your country. Verdicts are published per model year as the data is ingested — browse them live, or open the true-cost calculator to price any year yourself.

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