Citroën DS classic limousine car design detail

by Sjoerd van der Wal Photography

Rear indicator design on a classic French Citroën DS limousine car.

The Citroën DS is one of the most iconic and innovative cars ever produced. Its futuristic design, coupled with innovative engineering, set it apart from anything else on the road at the time of introduction in the 1950s.

The Citroën DS is one of the most extraordinary and visionary automobile designs in automotive history — a futuristic masterpiece so radical upon its 1955 Paris Motor Show debut that it remains breathtakingly distinctive seven decades later.Sculpted by Flaminio Bertoni, the DS is an exercise in organic, aerodynamic poetry — its long, tapering teardrop body, sweeping roofline, and dramatically narrowing tail creating a silhouette of genuinely otherworldly elegance. Every surface flows seamlessly into the next with a sculptural fluency borrowed more from nature than engineering convention.The rear design is particularly iconic and inspired. The dramatically tapering tail fins carry elegantly sculpted lamp clusters housing the DS's most celebrated detail — the distinctive elongated amber chevron indicators. These bold, upward-pointing transparent arrow shapes are simultaneously deeply functional and extraordinarily beautiful as pure graphic design objects — instantly communicating the car's intentions while adding jewel-like decorative brilliance to the tail.Revolutionary, poetic, and timeless — the DS remains automotive design's greatest single masterpiece.