MOTOR MAGNATE

Taranaki Daily News, 29 December 1934, Page 5

MOTOR MAGNATE

HIS FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES. PROMINENT FRENCHMAN’S PLAN London, Dec. 19. The. Paris correspondent of the Daily Mail states that the “Henry Ford of France,” M- Andre Citroen, is in financial difficulties. The Prime Minister, M. Flandin, received him to-day to discuss plans to prevent the closing of his motor works. A Bourse authority indicate? that M. Citroen is accepting a plan proposed by M. Michelin, tyre magnate, providing for voluntary liquidation, and full payment of all liabilities. M. Andre Citroen and M. Coty, perfume manufacturers, were the two most dazzling figures in French industry before the war. M. Citroen’s name pervades Paris . It is borne by one of every 10 of the motor-cars that race about the streets, and all through the night the Eiffel Tower, dominating the city, spells out in huge, electrically-lit letters, the word ’'Citroen.” It cost M. Citroen all his persuasiveness and influence to induce the Paris authorities to accept this, the largest electric sign in the world. It cost him £12,000 a year to maintain it. But he considered that a trifle compared with the tremendous publicity it gave him. No one outside the United States had ever attempted anything so colossal.

Not much more than 30 years ago M. Citroen was a penniless young engineer. He gambled with fate and won, ana went on winning. He had saved a little capital, thrown away all offers of a steady job, and became "independent.” Engaging 10 workers he started a hand grenade factory. The business paid. In 1908 M- Citroen was asked to reorganise a motor-car firm—h>s big chance. Staking all the money he had, and all he could borrow', he flung himself into the industry, which he shrewdly perceiv. ed was the industry of the future. Then came the Great War. Lieutenant Citroen, at the front with an artillery unit, soon noticed that his outfit, like all other French ones, was hampered by lack of ammunition, and that the little there was arrived at the front after great delay. He worked out a plan for an ammunition plant to overcome the shortage of shelly, and the French Government appointed him instantly a director of a factory guaranteed to produce 50,000 shells a day. After the war M. Citroen transformed his plant into a motor-car factory which continued its expansion until the last few years of trade restriction and currency fluctuation. With France clinging to the gold standard he found it increasingly difficult to sell abroad, and in France itself his market shrank. Now, faced with the prospect of the closing of the works into which he has put all his efforts and hopes, he has been compelled to seek aid to carry on.