Always liked them, if I had storage I could easily imagine having one as a fun car. Rust and complexity were the big problems.

I remember the DS was covered in The Car's the Stars TV series in the late 90s, here is the link:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUNB2RCqMLQ

Apparently Citroen, at the time, were obsessed with secrecy, so while engineers were familiar with their own 'aspect' of the car, very few had any understanding of the whole car. Dealers knew nothing whatsoever about it, and in most cases, refused to do anything with a broken down car. Citroen had a team of trouble shooters who would be dispatched to deal with DS problems. Cars they were unable to fix were, if possible, towed away under cover of darkness save anyone seeing the new flagship as unreliable.

But the issues themselves were numerous. Hydraulics, predictably, caused many headaches, leaking all over the place, including into the radiator. The clutch juddered, engines mangled their valve gear, the Italian made carbs were incompatible with French petrol. The low pressure pump generated so much heat it boiled the engine coolant. Steering ball joints cracked, fuel tanks collapsed due to an internal-external pressure differential. There was only a key lock on the drivers door on early cars, so if it was parked drivers side next to a tall kerb, when the suspension 'settled', you couldn't get in!. Even the wind up clock didn't work properly. When things were at their worst, the troubleshooting team would be taking up to 200 calls per day and members would be forever getting on trains or planes with a briefcase containing hydraulic rubbers and sometimes a length of hydraulic line round their shoulders!

The DS was way ahead of it's time. I suppose it's not surprising that some of the earlier cars were problematic.

I see that today's car manufactures still repeat some of the same faults. Hyundai still produce cars with clutches that judder. My 2004 Clio only had a key lock on the passenger(!) door so if you parked the passenger side close to a wall and the central locking failed, you couldn't get in the car. Many dealers still don't have the knowledge on how to diagnose and fix their cars.

However to me the DS has always been a bit special. It's a car that always attracts my attention (even as a young kid it the early 1970's). There's just never been another car like it.

The DS is the one car I'd love to own (subject to having access to a good specialist and a healthy bank balance for maintenance).

What's sad is how the marque came back in the last 10 years and has again essentially disappeared. The DS3 (when under the Citroen badge) was a great-selling car (I used to see them everywhere, now very few around) because it looked great, handled well and was quick in the more powerful versions.

And yet when Citroen decided to rebadge them as 'DS' with the rest of the range, sales plummeted. Note sure why for the DS3 - perhaps reliability issues finally surfaced, or the marketing campaigns were poor. The other 'Nu DS' cars never received particularly good reviews.

Very strange.