1878 On February 5th, as the youngest of five children, A. Citroen was born in Paris, France. Originally from the Netherlands, my father is a businessman engaged in jewelry business and my mother is Polish. When Citroen was young, he believed that scientific and technological progress would bring happiness to mankind, so he chose Paris Institute of Technology to study and prepare to be an engineer in the future. At the age of 22, he went to visit his grandmother in Poland for a holiday. On the way, he noticed a herringbone gear on each device, which inspired him. After coming back, I invented the herringbone gear transmission system and obtained a patent. After he got his diploma and finished his military service, he started his own company in 19 13, specializing in gear transmission.
19 12, Andre Citroen began to use herringbone gear as the product trademark of Citroen. Later, Citroen organized two trips across the African continent and across the Asian continent, which made Citroen famous. France is cheerful, fashionable, novel and beautiful. Citroen car shows this character of France, which exudes French romance all the time.
19 15, Andre Citroen founded Citroen Automobile Company, which was the first French manufacturer to produce cars by assembly line. Due to the adoption of advanced technology, its annual output has exceeded 6.5438+0 million vehicles in the sixth year. 1924 and I93 1 year, Andre Citroen organized "Asia Tour" and "Africa Tour", also known as "Yellow Tour" and "Black Tour", which made Citroen famous in the world and increased its sales. In 1970s, Citroen was in financial crisis. Just when Italy's Fiat Automobile Company wanted to annex it, Peugeot took over the troubled Citroen Company with its abundant financial resources and a government loan. 1976 10, the two companies merged to form a new holding company named "PSA". 1979, the company changed its name to "Peugeot Group". After joining Peugeot, Citroen became a member of Peugeot Group, but it still has great independence and its business activities are still controlled by itself.
In the operation of Peugeot Group, the automobile manufacturing business has always occupied an absolute advantage. Before the merger of the two companies, in Peugeot's business scope, automobiles accounted for 86%, bicycles accounted for 6%, steel, tools and plastics accounted for 5%, and finance and services accounted for 3%; Citroen's business is almost entirely based on cars. After the merger, the group's ability to manufacture automobiles has been greatly enhanced, accounting for about 90% of its turnover. There are about 200 companies and subsidiaries controlled by Peugeot. Among them, they are distributed in Europe, Africa and eastern China.
During World War I, Citroen was recruited as an artillery captain. When he found that he was short of ammunition, he volunteered to set up a factory to produce shells. Here, his organizational and management skills were fully brought into play, which not only made the daily output of artillery shells set a record of 50,000 pieces, but also made women take part in the work because of proper organization, thus making more men quit the war. 19 12 Citroen goes to America. There, he saw with his own eyes that Taylor's research and scientific production organization greatly reduced the production cost of Model T.. So he decided to manage his factory in the same way. After returning home, he boasted to everyone: "In the future, we will produce 100 cars every day!" At first, people thought he was talking nonsense Unexpectedly, since he took the lead in mass-producing Model A cars in Europe at 19 19, the output has increased rapidly. By 1923, the daily output reached 200, and by 1924, the daily output reached 300. Citroen has become one of the successful automobile manufacturers in Europe. 1924 On July 28th, Citroen Automobile Company was formally established.
Citroen insists that the car factory sells not only cars, but also meticulous services. He gradually improved the way of buying and selling cars, established a one-year warranty system, established a distribution network, listed parts catalogs and maintenance cost lists, so that the costs of all sales points and maintenance points could be unified. 1922, he vigorously promoted the installment car sales, established the first domestic organization specializing in installment payment, and established a number of car rental companies abroad, forming a tour bus service network all over the country.
Citroen has taken great pains in promoting the company and products: he erected the Citroen logo at intersections all over France, which strengthened people's impression of its logo; He let the car roll down from the mountain to prove the durability of the car body; He hired a plane to draw the words "Citroen" in the air with colorful fireworks; What's even more amazing is that he advertised in the form of 1925 neon lights of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, so that it can be seen within 30 kilometers around Paris; 1923, he launched a large-scale car race across the Sahara desert; 1924, organized a "black tour" racing activity all over Africa. 1927, American Lin Bai successfully flew over the North Atlantic. He tried his best to persuade the hero to go to his factory to accept the congratulations of the workers. As a result, the newspaper published such an article the next day-"Lindbergh visited Citroen"; Starting from 1928, citro 龙 n has published large advertisements in major newspapers in France 100 at the end of each month; 193 1 year, he opened the world's largest car mall (400 meters long) in Paris, France. Besides selling cars, he also shows movies and gives concerts.
Rich Citroen doesn't want to live in luxury, but keeps investing in factories to develop new models and pursue continuous technological progress. He even claimed that "as long as the idea is good, the price is not important". At the suggestion of engineer Lefeber, Citroen decided to adopt a series of brand-new technologies on the newly developed car: front-wheel drive, streamlined body, self-supporting design, torsion bar suspension device, hydraulic brake, suspension motor and automatic transmission. Because of the huge amount of money, he had to find some dealers and Michelin companies to seek sponsorship. Although this kind of front-wheel drive car, which was later called "robber car", brought great honor and rolling profits to Citroen, at that time, due to the long research and development cycle, the product could not be launched as scheduled, and there were many design and manufacturing defects after being put into production in a hurry, which hindered sales. Citroen suddenly became heavily in debt and had to sell the company to Michelin. Since then, he has been admitted to the hospital because of depression. 1July, 937, Citroen died. In the two days after his death, countless workers, dealers and even ordinary customers flocked to Citroen to pay tribute to him, and the French government also awarded him the second-class Medal of Honor. In fact, today's Citroen company is still world-famous, and its front-wheel drive design is still not outdated after more than 60 years.