The Citroën H Van is a 4- and 5-door panel vans; / (flat-bed) pickup (type HP) from Citroën, built from 1947 to 1981, in a decade split by war, when civilian production stopped and restarted. Under the bonnet: Petrol engine. Flaminio Bertoni, André Lefèbvre drew it.
The story
The Citroën H-Type vans (most commonly the Citroën HY), are a series of panel vans and light trucks, produced by French automaker Citroën for 34 years – from 1947 through 1981. They are notable for their industrial design, using many corrugated metal outer body panels to save material, weight, and costs. Early models of the uniquely styled trucks were just named Type H, but soon they were differentiated by a second letter, using the last four letters in the alphabet – except for the type HP for (flat-bed) pickups.
Thus the vans were built as the types HW through HZ – with the majority of them built as Citroën HY. The Citroën H-types were developed as simple, low-cost, front-wheel drive vans after World War II, using the same design philosophy as on Citroën's 2CV, but featuring a frameless, unitary body-structure. A total of 473,289 of their variants were produced in 34 years in factories in France and Belgium.
What is underneath
Power comes from Petrol engine; other versions carried different engines, listed in the specification table below. It weighs 1400 kg. It shifts through a 3-speed manual, single dry plate clutch. The layout matters: the engine drives the front wheels, the packaging choice that gives a small car a big cabin. The wheelbase is 2500 mm (base). These are manufacturer figures carried by Wikipedia and Wikidata, not road-test measurements.
Its place in the line
Its family tree is legible: it took over from the Citroën TUB; its successor was the Citroën C35 / Citroën C25; assembly was at Paris. Its contemporaries in the catalogue — the Porsche 356, the Chevrolet Bel Air, the Ferrari 159 S — show what else the money bought that year. Nearby in the Citroën catalogue sit the Citroën K and the Citroën 2CV.
What it costs now
MotorJury scores cars on the United States complaint and recall record, and the Citroën H Van has none: too old, too rare, or never sold there. Its value today is a collector's question, decided by provenance and condition rather than by a class average.