Citroen has confirmed there'll be no new 2CV

Citroen turned 100 this month, celebrating its first century with a vast display of its greatest hits on the streets of Paris. But don’t expect any revisits of its older models to mark the occasion.

“We evolve our designs by looking at the past,” Citroen boss Linda Jackson told us, “but what I don’t want to do is become a manufacturer that produces retro.

“I’m not going to produce a new 2CV. That had its time, it was right, but it’s about finding out the next design that’ll be right for the customer.”

So while her company’s small cars rival the likes of the Fiat 500 and Mini, don’t expect any of them to borrow the tin snail’s name or styling to chase the same nostalgic vibes.

“We do frequently revisit the past,” she continues. “When I started at the company we took all the teams to our Conservatoire (Citroen’s historic collection). We sent them off and told them to come back and tell us what is ‘Citroen’.

“They came back with the chevrons, the roundedness of design, and then they noticed through time that the designs sort of evolve and you see them moving from one time to the next, particularly around lighting structures. Next year, when we launch another vehicle, we’ll evolve our lighting signature again.”

But it’s all about continual evolution, not a hark back into the past. “No, I don’t want to do that,” Jackson says. “I think you need to be continually thinking innovatively. If you go back to what you did before? Okay, it was successful then, but I think people want newness.

“People want something different, but you need to keep coherence. If I go back to 2014 when I started we made some great cars, but there was no coherence. You wouldn’t have known it was a family.”

So, how are you feeling? Sad the 2CV won’t have a comeback, at least under Jackson’s watch?