I'd never seen this car in town before and I haven't seen it since, so it's either a one-time visitor to the island or an Alameda car that normally lives in a garage.


This is one of the few vehicles that could actually fit in one of the typical basement "garages" dug under Alameda houses during the very early days of the automobile. Back in 1911, everyone knew that cars would always be tall and narrow, with vast ground clearance, and they built theses garage accordingly (those who built huge "entertainment centers" into their living rooms based on the assumption that televisions would always be 4' deep CRTs are now learning the same lesson). These days, the only vehicles that can get down such a driveway are motorcycles and vehicles built on designs from the 1930s and earlier… such as the Traction-Avant, which was so technologically advanced for its time that it might as well have been from another planet.


Yes, front-wheel-drive cars can be cool. Just ask this back-seat passenger!


According to Citroënet's section on the Traction-Avant, the 11 was available only in black; the Légère was the "entry-level" Traction-Avant 11, but it was no stripped-down econobox. This hood ornament is rivaled only by the likes of the Pontiac Chieftan's!

We've already had one French DOTS Bonus Edition today, but what's wrong with having a DOTS Bonus Bonus Edition? This wagon really is Henry Hanzel's daily driver; we're talking about a man who grew up going on road trips across the United States in a Traction-Avant, who drove a 2CV in high school, and whose parents owned Oakland's Citroën and Panhard dealerships back in the day. Yes, I totally want a Citroën now!

Just where do we draw the line between a project car and a parts car? Always a tough call, but we've found an even tougher question: when does a single part become a car? Because of the near-impossibility of reading the huge, CAPS LOCKED, red-and-blue font used by the seller of this 1925 Renault Type 45, it took me a while to realize that this auction is for just the hood of a Renault 45. This seller deserves the Most Unreadable eBay Listing Ever Award, and there's some tough competition for that prize (those of you who wish to wimp out and attempt to extract information from the description can go here). Once you've got the hood- I mean, the bonnet- you're pretty much home free; as the seller states: "AS THE BONNET IS MOST SALIENT AND DIFFICULT PART TO REPRODUCE OF THE TYPE 45, IT IS AN EXCELLENT STARTING POINT FOR A GROUND UP RECREATION." You see? It's a restoration project, not a hopeless parts chase that will take you from Hanoi to Abidjan. The reserve on this auction hasn't been met, but we can assume it's fairly high, since "ACTUAL VALUE OF THIS ITEM IS $20-40K USD." Don't worry about that stuff, however, because having a finished Model 45 will be worth all the pain.

That Renault would be quite a car, all right, but maybe you're more of a Citroën driver at heart. Admit it, you've been lusting for a Traction-Avant for years now, but perhaps the difficulty of finding one in North America has forced you to give up on your dream. Hey, you'll be doing front-drive French burnouts before you know it, once you buy this 1951 Citroën Traction-Avant (go here if the ad disappears). The seller wants four grand for it, which is quite a deal when you consider you get a "heavily customized" project. First thing is the engine, which came from a Renault 5. Le Car power in a Traction-Avant! Naturally, you'll need to ditch that Malaise boat anchor and install the Maserati V6 out of a Citroën SM- hey, if they can put a man on the moon! The seller says "currently not running, needs clutch, body work, paint, interior etc," and that "etc" part covers a lot of scary ground when you're talking about a massively modified 57-year-old French car. As we say so often here (thanks to Kevin Hoover), what could go wrong?

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Do you feel like tackling an 81-year-old car that's so incomplete that the seller isn't even sure what it is? The seller's best guess is that this $500 car (go here if the ad disappears) is a 1917 Overland. If so, that means it's the great-great-great-grandaddy of every Jeep ever made! Now, you figure a price that low for a car this old, well, it might be missing some stuff. You figured right! Still, it's a vaguely car-shaped collection of rusty parts, which could be the start of a staggeringly frustrating and costly restoration project... or a marginally less frustrating pre-WW2-style hot rod project. Get yourself a flathead Ford V8 and start banging on sheet metal, and maybe a few years later you'll emerge from the garage- bloodstained, exhausted, and broke- driving something that would have made every hoon in 1939 stagger back in awe.

There's a lot of anti-front-wheel-drive grumbling around these parts, but how could anybody possibly look at a Citröen Traction-Avant and lump it together with, say, a Hyundai Excel? You may have bemoaned the impossibility of ever having your very own Traction-Avant, due to their rarity and high cost... but never give up on your project car dreams! Here's a 1938 Traction-Avant that's only been bid up to $405 at the time of this writing, and we're guessing the reserve price won't be too crazy. Everything seems to be an ominous red-orange color, but the seller says "No major structural rust," so you'd have some sort of longshot possibility of making a drivable machine out of this collection of parts. You get a "later-model" engine (which we hope means later-model Traction-Avant), and it looks like most of the important parts are included. What kind of project to build out of this thing? Keep it original, or go nuts with crazy modifications? Either way, it's French, it's in pieces, and it's 70 years old! Thanks, and a half-credit towards a Project Car Hell Tipster T-shirt to zweirad for the tip.

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