Well, three in Europe, and 31 out of the 50 States of America. Definitely two rear license plates no matter where you were. What’s going on here? Why would this car need an extra license plate at the rear? There’s a hint of the answer in this picture: It’s subtle, but do you see the extra license plate there? It’s laying flat, at a 90° angle to the normally-positioned license plate there. So, why, exactly, would you want a secondary license plate facing up? Is it to be more cooperative with police helicopters? To understand why, we must understand the car, at least a little bit. The Citroën DS or ID (basically two trim levels of the same car, the DS being the higher-spec one) was available as a wagon, which the French like to refer to as a “break,” which comes from the French term break de chasse, which means “hunting break,” where “break” refers to a kind of horse carriage used to break horses, and, I guess, also carry people with guns who want to shoot animals in the woods. Anyway, Citroën’s wagon design included a nice clamshell rear hatch-and-tailgate combo:
Of course, if you have a tailgate, you may want to drive with that tailgate down so you can haul really long things, like a six-foot party sub, and since you have no interest in violating your chosen nation’s road laws, you want your license plate visible. Hence:
See? The second license plate remains readable even with the tailgate down! And, if you look at how the license plate lamps are positioned, you can see they’re set at a 45° angle so both plates receive bountiful illumination:
What I find fascinating about this solution is that it seems like such an extra burden to put on the car’s owner when a simple hinged setup would work. In fact, later DS and ID Breaks did just that–you only needed one plate, like every other freaking car in the world, and the license plate (and light assembly) just hinged to the right angle, like how Minis and Volvos and Subaru Brats and other cars handled this same problem:
See? Just a hinge is all that’s needed. I can’t help but wonder what kind of hoops you’d have to jump through to get an additional license plate in Europe; maybe it was easier back in 1960s Europe or America, but I know if I had to get a second rear plate for a car I drove now here in my state of North Carolina in this year of our lord 2022, it would require a hell of a lot of phone calls and explanations and likely multiple long, tedious trips to the DMV and probably some specialized office in the middle of nowhere. And I’m still not sure you could legally do it. I’d also like to point out that Citroën also seems to have tried just splitting the difference and mounting one plate at a 45° angle:
That works, too, I suppose. So, I gotta hand it to Citroën’s franc-pinchers for coming up with a way to add a clever feature to a car and yet managing to make the buyer pay for it and do most of the work needed to make it a reality. That’s impressive. Back then, in the UK (this is a UK model), you just went into your local Halfords (automotive and bike store), walked up to the counter and said: “please make me a rear license plate with this combination of letters and numbers on it”. They would make the plate and sell it to you. There was no check that you were entitled to use that plate. This was a common occurrence , because trailers did not have their own plates: one put a plate on the trailer with the towing vehicle’s registration on it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M_jh4CA8a8 Or the number/letters on the front grill of Number 6’s Lotus Seven. 😉 “And, if you look at how the license plate lamps are positioned, you can see they’re set at a 45° angle so both plates receive bountiful illumination” I seem to recall it being a feature they trumpeted at the time, as if there were a lot of people transporting 2x4s in their Baja. I mean, people who don’t come here. RIP my nice plates that ended in 69. 🙂 “No, it’s b/c my car is a Citroen. A CITROEN. C-I-T…no, I’m not being disrespectful I’m just trying to…” Oops, did I say that out loud? But for some reason I do love a complicated solution. The break was an imposing sight in the Jewish quarter. I don’t remember which plate setup it used though. I also discovered how to accidentally turn off the DRLs on the rented Nissan Qashqai. This will get you pulled over, upon which your wife will have difficulty finding the registration papers in the deep dark cave of a glove box, causing you to sweat for a few minutes, wondering if you’ll be seeing the inside of a Swiss jail! Yes, the double entendre was intended. 🙂 It’s strange with the DS: The regular four door is just so beautiful. But any variants just look like ugly mutated monsters. That goes both for the open Chapron one and the station wagon. And the short wheelbase rally versions. So to give Chapron the freedom to start almost from scratch with the SM, was a brilliant idea. It has the same gear box and hydraulic system, but can’t think of much else carried over from the DS.
