Seattle Citroën
Photo Sleuths #7
UPDATED 9/2026
Have a vintage photo of a Citroën in the USA or Canada? Send it in and we will see what we can learn about it!
TROIS RIVIERES, QUEBEC, ~1969
I struggled with this one for years and just couldn’t figure it out. But recently someone posted a higher resolution version of the photo that helped me read the signage. It turns out that the hotel in the photo was called, Hôtel des Trois-Rivières, located near the waterfront on Boulevard Des Forges in Trois Rivieres, Quebec. The entire area has been massively redeveloped, making it impossible to see anything at all familiar in the current view.
Google street view
NOW
THEN
I see late 1960’s cars, and I discovered that Restaurant Richer (barely visible on the signage) opened in 1968 at 34 Rue Des Forges. This means that the photo is likely from the very late 1960’s. I am going to guess 1969.
RED ROCKS ROAD, COLORADO, EARLY 1960's
The only thing that is known about this photo is that it was from Ivan Frank's collection. Ivan was a Citroën dealer from the Denver area in the 1960's. My approach was to explore the roads in national parks near Denver using Google Street View. After an embarrassing number of hours, I finally found it: Red Rocks Park Road in Red Rocks Park in Colorado (exactly 3 miles [4.8 km] north of Morrisson, Colorado).
Ivan Frank
THEN
Google street view
NOW
The car is almost certainly Ivan’s ID19 #77 that he had prepared to be a rally car. Based on other photos of his car, it is a 1959-1961 ID19, using the first-generation nose and the unique rear reflectors on the rear fenders as clues. I have no idea when the photo was taken, but based on Ivan's career, it is probably from the early 1960's.
VANCOUVER BC, CANADA, EARLY 1970's
I had no initial clues that came with this photo. However, we can see an "Old Spaghetti Factory" sign painted on the wall of the building on the left. There is also a street address on the awning showing the number 53. It didn't take long to discover that this is the Old Spaghetti Factory at 53 Water Street in Vancouver BC.
DS19 or ID19 sitting on Water Street in Gastown, Vancouver BC.
Google street view , 2022
The center building in the modern photo was built after the vintage photo was taken, but you can see the cornice detail on the Spaghetti Factory building in both views (see arrows). The Spaghetti Factory apparently moved into this location in 1970, so the photo is likely from the early 1970's.
The DS has early hubcaps (that were used with the 400 mm wheels) and Lucas Twist-Off rear turn signal lenses, so it must be a North American model DS19 or ID19, most likely from 1963-1965.
PACOIMA CALIFORNIA, 1979
This photo was submitted by reader Peter Engle who noted it was a screen grab from the 1979 Muppet Movie. But where was the photo taken? The clue was the Vespa sign on the top of the building and the "Casey's Cycle Repair" sign. It did not take long to discover that the location was 10249 San Fernando Road in Pacoima, CA.
Google street view , 2025
The Mehari is a US model as can be seen from the unique front end with sealed beam headlights. It must be either a 1969 or 1970 since those were the only years that Mehari were sold in the USA. To get a better look at the Mehari, I cropped it and rotated it.
INVERTED MEHARI FROM THE 1979 MUPPET MOVIE
RIMOUSKI, QUEBEC, 1969
Two interesting photos recently emerged from the Canadian National Archives.
The photos turned out to be some sort of a showing of new 1969 DS models. I am assuming that the showing was set up by Citroen Canada or perhaps one of the local dealerships.
The car outside is a standard DS21 in Blanc Carrare (AC144), and the car inside is a Pallas in Gris Nocturne (AC099). Yes, these colors are 1968 colors, but remember that North American DS's in early 1969 were actually 1968 models...see more about this HERE.
The archives contain a bit of a clue as to where the photos were taken, as the word Rimouski shows up in the description. Rimouski is a Canadian city on the St. Lawrence river, near the province of New Brunswick. With this clue, can we find the specific location?
J.-Gérard Lacombe, Quebec Archives
J.-Gérard Lacombe, Quebec Archives
Google street view , 2021
1969
2021
Fortunately, Rimouski is small enough that it was possible to find the location of the photos without too much difficulty. While no longer a Fina gas station, the building is still there, now an auto repair shop, located at 489 Boulevard Saint Germain Ouest.
LOS ANGELES CALIFORNIA, 1940's
This is a screen grab from an interesting YouTube video someone sent me. The video, filmed from a moving train, shows a road with a bunch of old cars driving along. Prominently in the view in much of the footage is a Traction Avant. The video description says it is Los Angeles in the 1940's, but can we find the specific road?
Google street view , 2025
In the background of the video, there are several businesses that can be seen, including one called Valley Wrecking and Lumber. Using old phone books to look for this business, it did not take long to track down this road. It is 3311 N. San Fernando Road in Los Angeles. You can watch the video HERE.
The Traction Avant is almost surely one of the cars sold by nearby Challenger Motors. The car has to be about a 1938-1940.
BUFFALO NEW YORK, ~1960
Two amazing photos just showed up of a business called, French Car Service.
ANDRE GARNIER'S REPAIR BUSINESS, ABOUT 1960
It only took a few minutes to figure this one out. French Car Service was an authorized Citroën repair service operated by non-other than Andre Garnier, a man we have discussed before (he is the guy who drove 3-wheeled DS's in New York and later in Florida). He ran this business for about four years between 1958-1962. The business was located in Buffalo New York, at 23 Clyde Avenue. It looks like his building is still there!
There are two very interesting cars in these photos. The first car is the silver car on the right side of the first photo. I think it is a British-built Elva MKIIB, from about 1957, a very rare car with perhaps only 4 built. Someone correct me if I am wrong.
The second unusual car is the red convertible in the second photo. It turns out to be a Panhard Junior, made from 1952-1956.
Google street view, 2020
THEN
NOW
VANCOUVER BC CANADA, 1963
This one was easy. The location first: The Clarke Simpkins car dealership can be seen in the background. Clarke Simpkins was a prominent car dealership in Vancouver in the 1950's and 1960's. They were briefly a Citroën dealership.
Canadian Motorsport Historical Society
Google street view, 2024
If you look closely at the car, one can see that it is participating in the Shell 4000, a grueling trans-Canadian rally. I looked through the Canadian Motorsport Historical Society's archives and found that this car was participating in the 1963 run. For this year, the rally went west-to-east, from Vancouver to Montreal on a variety of roads, including remote logging roads, with mud, snow, and dirt.
I further found out that the man standing next to the car is John Burns, a business man from NY who owned a company named, Burns Industries. This company imported Halda timers and odometers for rallying. He was accompanied by Andre Garnier from NY. Andre Garnier has been mentioned on this website many times (see previous photo sleuth).
These two men finished the race and came in 39th, just ahead of Alice Fergusson who came in 40th. A second DS19 entered and came in 23rd. You can spot this car several times in THIS video of the 1963 Shell 4000. I was able to find a few more photos of this car on the rally.
Canadian Motorsport Historical Society
Canadian Motorsport Historical Society
The DS19 is a second generation nose, so John Burns and Andre Garnier took a brand new 1963 DS19 on this rally. I can guarantee that it didn't look like this at the end of the rally....
VANCOUVER BC CANADA, 1967
It was easy to recognize that this car was another Shell 4000 participant. With a little digging in the Canadian Motorsport Historical Society website, I found the photo! It turns out that the car was of a 1966 or 1967 DS21 that was driven by Dr. Keith Ronald & John Medwell. This particular car did not complete the race, but two other DS’s were in the same race and came in 5th and 6th place out of 51 cars that entered.
Google Earth Pro
Canadian Motorsport Historical Society
The car looks clean and undamaged so I figured that photo was taken at the beginning of the race, which for 1967, was in Vancouver. The landscape of downtown Vancouver has changed dramatically since 1967 but I found a building in the background called Bentall #1 which helped locate where the car was parked. The only way to see the building at the same angle now is to use a Google Earth view. The car was parked where the maze of rail lines is today.
The date of the photo was May 10, 1967. I found a second photo of this car, hopelessly mired in mud.
LOS ANGELES, CA, 1947
This photo shows two modified Traction Avant cabriolets. What can we learn?
Bob Hammel
The photo looked familiar and with a bit of digging, it turns out that it was provided back in the year 2000 by Bob Hammel, the man on the right. He noted that the other man is Bill Binney. In the 1940’s, both men took pre-war Citroën cabriolets (that had been originally sold by Challenger Motors) and modified them. In a 2000 article in the NWCOC, Bob noted that he regretted modifying the car, but wrote it off as a folly of youth. Bob passed away in 2006 at the age of 86.
Bob Hammel
Google Street View
Can we figure out when and where the photo was taken? We can see a sign for West Coast Motors in the background. With some sleuthing, we found that this business was located at 12100 Ventura Boulevard in Los Angeles and it operated from this address between about 1947 and 1952.
If you look carefully, you can see the marquis for the Studio City Theater in both the old view and the current view.
NEW YORK CITY, APRIL 1963
This stunningly clear photo of a DS convertible recently surfaced. Let's figure out when and where it was taken.
Jean-Yves Létourneau, La Presse, 1963
The key to figuring this one out is to notice the La Presse logo in the lower right corner of the photo. La Presse is a prominent French Language newspaper in Quebec. Searching through the La Presse archives on the BaNQ Canadian National Archives website (eventually) revealed that the photo was taken at the New York International Auto Show by a La Presse photographer at the NYC Coliseum on April 13, 1963.
The Coliseum was torn down in 2000.
Google Street View
NEW YORK COLISEUM IN THE LATE 1950's
CURRENT VIEW
LOS ANGELES, CA, 1938
A reader provided us with a copy of a very rare brochure from Challenger Motors, the company that started importing Traction Avants to the USA in 1938. The following photo from the brochure shows one of their cars sitting in front of a building with arches. Can we find out where the photo was taken?
BROCHURE PHOTO FROM CHALLENGER MOTORS
First, since the car has a "Challenger" badge on the side of the hood, the photo was likely taken in the USA, most likely Los Angeles.
A few minutes of Googling for arched structures in Los Angeles revealed that the photo was taken in front of the Los Angeles Colisieum, built in 1923.
CITROEN IN FRONT OF THE LOS ANGELES COLISIEUM, 1938
When was the photo taken? It is likely to have been taken in the spring of 1938, when Challenger first started their operations.
HUNTINGTON STATION, NEW YORK, 1965
Site contributor Greg Long provided this stunning photo.
The origin of this photo is not positively known, but Citroën enthusiast Gert Bue Larsen suspects that it might be part of William Klein's photo shoot for the beautiful 1965 brochure called, "Unanimity", perhaps a photo that did not make it into the brochure. I think Gert might be correct. There are other photos in the brochure that look very similar in style and the car matches the photos in the brochure.
PHOTOS FROM WILLIAM KLEIN'S "UNANIMITY" BROCHURE
A quick bit of sleuthing revealed that Tengelsen's Pharmacy was located at 1979 New York Avenue, Huntington Station, New York. Even though the photos were taken in New York of a North American DS19 (about 1965), the brochure was published in several languages and used in other countries. The pharmacy is long gone and the building has been a fireplace shop for decades.
Google Street View