Freewrite Friday: Halftrack Connections
Friday, November 16th, 2007If I told you that there was an automotive connection between the last Tsar of Russia, the Eiffel tower, the Sahara Desert, the Silk Road, the Freemasons, and military vehicles would you believe me?
You would if you’d ever heard of the Citroen Halftrack. It was a car developed by (you guessed it) Andre Citroen who used a Kegresse track system for the rear propulsion. Kegresse developed his system while working in Russia, using personal vehicles from Tsar Nicholas II’s personal motorcade.
Citroen adapted the technology to his cars, which, as halftracks, had normal front wheels. Among his other achievements were a special herringbone-style gear that helped reduce axial thrust. He was a Freemason and some thing the Citroen logo is an adaptation of the Freemasons’ symbol for architecture. Citroen’s other big splash was when he used the Eiffel tower as the world’s largest billboard.
Later, Citroen and Georges-Marie Haardt formed a partnership of exploration, using Citroen halftracks sporting Kegresse’s drive system to lead the first motorcar expedition across the Sahara, from Toggourt, Algeria, to Timbuktu, Mali, in 1922, and then to traverse Africa from north to south in an expedition known as La Croisere Noire, in 1924-25.
The most famous Citroen-Haardt expedition included military personnel who were studying the technology (the US would later use it in both World War I and World War II). This expedition, known as La Croisiere Jaune began on April 4th 1931, in Beirut, Lebanon, and followed Marco Polo’s Silk Road to Beijing, China, during which it was besieged by bandits, delayed by Russian bureaucracy, and documented by National Geographic Magazine.
From Tsarist Russia to Beijing, and from the heart of Paris to the trenches, halftracks connect more than you think.
