The Citroën DS is the car that has amazed the entire world and still does capture curious glances to this day.

In French DS is pronounced Déesse meaning Goddess emphasizing a well-suited name for this divine car.

 

On October 6th, 1955, at nine o'clock, the doors of the Grand Palais des Expositions in Paris opened for what had been announced as the most anticipated edition of the “Salon de l'Automobile”.

Rumors had long been circulating there about a new, amazing Citroën car: a revolutionary and so innovative car, capable of making all other cars age seem twenty years older.

Designed by Flaminio Bertoni, the DS is an example of how an industrial product can virtuously combine together technique and style, utility and harmony, functionality and aesthetics, comfort and safety.

This perfectly refined shape does not merely embodies modernity for its own sake, it is the expression of an innovative and highly technical mastery entailing both function and sophistication.

• A true "sculpture in motion", it was celebrated by Gio Ponti at the XI Triennale in Milan (1957), where it was exhibited alongside the works by universally know architects and designers, an honour reserved for only a few iconic figures of world automotive It was elected Car of the Century.
• It has won the first prize at the Milan Triennale in
• It is permanently exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and is part of an incredible number of art collections in the most diverse sectors.
• It won first prize as "industrial product of the century", surpassing even Boeing's Jumbo and Apple's Macintosh computer.
• It was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in
• It was exhibited at FIAC, International Contemporary Art Fair in It has been on display at the Turin Automobile Museum since 1959.
• Professor Germano Celant, senior curator at the Guggenheim Museum, stated that the DS was the first car "to communicate an image."
• It was even celebrated by the prominent semiologist Roland Barthes, who dedicated an entire chapter to it in his book «Mythologies», 1957

The DS has always maintained a strong connection with artistic expression: the protagonist of avant-garde advertising campaigns, of photo shoots by Helmut Newton, Cartier-Bresson, William Klein, Robert Doisneau, of famous films, it remains a highly sought-after car in the era of videos and digital media.

It has been the car of actors, heads of State, celebrities and captains of industry. General De Gaulle, Yuri Gagarin, the Prince of Holland, the royal family of Monaco, to name only a few illustrious people. In Italy it was Inspector Ginko‘s car in the comic Diabolik.

In countless photos, the DS has been pictured alongside admired and influential people: Grace Kelly, Jacqueline Kennedy, Brigitte Bardot, Maria Callas, Carla Bruni, Sofia Loren, Alain Delon, Marcello Mastroianni, Gina Lollobrigida, Monica Vitti, Alberto Sordi, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Princess Hereditary Margrethe of Denmark, Auedry Hepburn, Orson Welles, Charles Aznavour, Lino Ventura, Louis de Funes, Jane Birkin, Michèle Morgan, Francis Ford Coppola, Claudia Schiffer, Juliette Gréco, Romy Schneider, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, Cary Grant, Catherine Deneuve, Claudia Cardinale, Edith Piaf, Ingrid Bergman, Jerry Lewis, Joséphine Baker, Muhammad Ali, Pablo Picasso, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Georges Pompidou and many more, protagonists in thousands of films and several stages.