Citroën × Le Creuset

Announced October 6, 1966, at the Salon de l'Automobile in Paris, the Fourgonnette Volcanique began as a practical problem. Le Creuset's travelling demonstrators were ruining their stock in the back of borrowed Renaults, and the enamel did not survive French market towns. Citroën's utility department at Levallois already had the answer in the 2CV AZU, whose soft suspension could famously cross a ploughed field with a basket of eggs. The two firms simply agreed to take the egg test seriously.

Styling fell to Robert Opron, then four years into his time at Citroën, working with notes from Raymond Loewy, who had drawn Le Creuset's Coquelle in 1958. Loewy's contribution was mostly one sentence, written on the back of a menu: the van should look like the pan. The body was hand-sprayed in Volcanique, the lower sills and wheel arches shaded down to a deep near-black flame, exactly as Le Creuset graded its cookware. Each van took a painter at Levallois around three hours, and no two gradients match.

Inside the corrugated load bay sat slotted beech racks with felt-lined cradles sized to Le Creuset's standard round casseroles, from 18 to 28 cm. The rear doors opened onto a hinged steel shelf with a two-burner Butagaz ring, so a demonstrator could cook a daube on the pavement. The gear lever, sprouting from the dashboard in the usual 2CV manner, was capped with a genuine black phenolic Le Creuset lid knob, unmodified apart from a brass thread insert.

The trade press was polite and faintly puzzled. L'Automobile called it 'the most useful kitchen in France', while Le Monde noted that it was cheaper than a Mercedes and cooked better. Most were sold to Le Creuset's own regional agents, but a handful went to restaurateurs in Lyon and Burgundy who used them for market runs, and at least one was delivered to a convent near Fresnoy-le-Grand, the town where the cookware was made.