The gray goddess
08/07/2022
Finally I can pick up on one of my boss's blog posts and add a bit of my two cents. Because not everywhere was as colorful as Ingolstadt in the past. The Citroën DS, for example, was available in 17 different shades of gray during its production period. From 1957 to 1971, at least one new shade of gray was added every year or replaced a previous shade. Sometimes they slipped more into blue ("Gris Ardoise"), sometimes more into beige ("Gris Sable"). But officially they were all colorless.
Sometimes they even had quite unusual names. Such as "Gris Ciel Lourd" in 1966, the gray of an overcast sky, or the summery "Gris d'Été" the year before. Although summer is generally the season least associated with dreary gray. No less creative is the "Gris Brumaire", which was only offered in 1970 and whose name can only be translated somewhat clumsily. The so-called month of fog is the second in the republican calendar of the French Revolution and runs from the end of October to the end of November.
The goddess's darkest year was probably 1960, when four shades of gray were on offer with "Gris Rosé", "Gris Mouette", "Gris Palombe" and "Gris Typhon", as well as classic black. "Gris Anthracite", which was sprayed on the bodies from 1961 to 1965, remained in the range the longest. Its duration was only surpassed by "Gris Nacré", introduced in 1969, which remained in the range until production was stopped in 1975, but was more of a pearly silver metallic.
From 1972 - the year in which the Audi 80 was introduced - "Gris Nacré" was the only gray in the Citroën range until the end. In addition, bright colors such as "Bleu Lagune" and "Rouge de Rio" were increasingly used. Maybe my boss wasn't so wrong after all.
